Three brilliant men who shaped the world died yesterday.

Steve Jobs is the name everyone knows. It’s hard to overstate the impact on our lives of this man most of us have never met. I’ve barely spent a waking moment away from an Apple product since I learned of his death yesterday. Listening to my Ipod, working on my computer – even when I was in the kitchen my housemate was at the table on her Mac laptop. Jobs’ work enabled new forms of communication like, oh, this blog.

Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth may be less well known to white America. He was a life long civil rights activist, leading many actions that played a vital role in ending Jim Crow. And ...