MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. Later in the broadcast, using the value of your home to raise money in retirement, the evolution of reverse mortgages. But first, they say sad news comes in threes. And this week we learn that three iconoclasts have died. The tech world was shaken yesterday with the news that Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs had died.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIWith all the well-deserved accolades and news copy about the tech icon, you might have missed the passing of two icons in civil rights and the law. Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth died Wednesday at age 89. He was commonly described as one of the bravest leaders in the civil rights movement. A man who marched alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. in Alabama, who helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and who seemingly took more risks and more beatings at the hands of white supremacists than any other figure in the 1950s and 1960s.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIBut we begin with Derrick Bell who died yesterday at age 80. Bell was a trailblazer in the field of law, the first tenured African-American professor at Harvard Law School and a provocative academic whose legal theories are still being debated today. We spoke with Charles Ogletree, professor of law and director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School. I began by thanking Professor Ogletree for joining us.

MR. CHARLES OGLETREEI'm sad to be with you today. It's a wonderful day to be with you, but a very sad day in light of all that's happened in the last 24 hours.

NNAMDIDerrick Bell had a huge impact on the way we think about the law, but also on the institutions that teach it. You attended Harvard Law in the mid to late '70s at a time when issues of race was simmering at the university. Why was Derrick Bell so important?

OGLETREEWell, he was first my teacher. And I learned a lot from him. And I think my teaching style and approach is deeply influenced by what I learned from him in the 1970s. And you may recall that Derrick was very unhappy with Harvard's lack of having a woman of color on the faculty. And he actually decided to protest and say that he was going to leave Harvard unless Harvard get a woman of color.

OGLETREEWhat most of your listeners may not know is that there's a rally in 1991 and one of the people speaking on his behalf was our president, Barack Obama, who's then a second year law student and the president of the Harvard Law Review called Derrick Bell the Rosa Parks of the legal profession. So, it's that significant impact he had on, you know, legions, thousands of students over four decades that made him such a remarkable teacher and friend, and everyone considers him a mentor given the work that he did for us in the last 40 years.

NNAMDIDerrick Bell is commonly credited with creating a legal framework called Critical Race Theory. How did he change the way we think about race and American institutions?

OGLETREEWell, he made us think about race in the American institution. Our constitution did not say slaves in the way it should have said it. But it did address the fact that certain folks could have voting rights based on considering their slaves as one-fifth of a person. And so, he understood the constitution like Thurgood Marshall did, was flawed from beginning. And as a scholar of constitutional law, he used that to make us think about it.

OGLETREEKojo, one of his more provocative theories that continues to reside in the legal academy is this. He had a theory called interest convergence. And his view was that there would be no progress for people of color, particularly African-Americans, unless the interest match those of whites. That is, if whites have to see some benefit from anything before they would support anything for people of color. And as someone who's had to be critical of his theory, it's hard to be critical of his theory when it seems to come through over and over and over again.

OGLETREEAnd we debated and argued about it, and laughed and thought about it. But he was always one step ahead of us in terms of his scholarship to tell us to think critically about the law, who it includes and who it excludes, and whether we and this next generation of scholars can change that. And that's what we're trying to do. It's a terrible loss for all of us to have him pass away last night.

NNAMDII guess the irony and truthfulness of that statement goes on in the dialogue that we find now in the African-American community over whether President Barack Obama can introduce and have legislation passed that attempts specifically to address concerns of African-Americans.

OGLETREEExactly right. And that's the sort of discussions I've had with Professor Bell while he was alive about how much of a difficulties one to have doing things that are for the least of these when he has resistance from those who are in power. So that theory that seemed abstract and overly broad in some context has been very readily applied to some of the problems that we see in the 21st century.

NNAMDIHow are issues of race at Harvard University different today than they were during the 1970s?

OGLETREEThey're remarkably different. We still have a lot of work to do, but there are seven people of color, seven African-Americans on the faculty. We have two black women, rather than none. We have both Lani Guinier, who came in 1998 and has been there since then. And we just hired and she's accepted our offer, Annette Gordon-Reed, who you may remember, not only a Harvard Law School graduate on the Law Review, but she also wrote the most definitive work about Sally Hemings, the slave woman who was owned by Thomas Jefferson.

OGLETREEAnd expressly talked about the relationship between the two of them and that Hemings was, in fact, the mother of children fathered by Jefferson that people denied for centuries. And DNA and other evidence finally proved her theory as a legal historian to be correct. So, we're making some progress. We have the highest percentage of African-American students we've ever had. It's in double digits. It's over 10 percent.

OGLETREEAnd, you know, we still have a long way to go, but I think we're making some progress that is a result of quite -- a result of two things. And we can't forget that right here in Washington, D.C. is a result of the great work that was done at Howard University, which opened doors for people to go to places like Harvard. And Charles Hamilton Houston, whose institute I now run at Harvard, was a Harvard Law School graduate. The first black in the Law Review.

OGLETREEHe came back talked at Howard Law School in the 1930s, Thurgood Marshall, Oliver Hill and many others, and developed a strategy that led to the end of segregation. So we have learned from the great work that was done here in Washington decades ago. And we're trying to make sure that we have the same kind of commitment in the 21st century that Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, Oliver Hill, Contance Baker Motley, Bill Coleman, and so many others from Howard, from Harvard and other places had that make a big difference.

NNAMDIAnd I guess even in the midst of our sadness over the passing of Derrick Bell, we can smile because he will be remembered not only for his principles and his theories, his promotions and his hirings. But uniquely, for also his resignations.

OGLETREEExactly right. And he resigned not only from Harvard because of the lack of diversity. He resigned as dean at the University of Oregon Law School because of the lack of diversity. And he taught me and became a friend and mentor. He taught my daughter Rashida, who's a lawyer now in the Department of Justice. He taught the Obamas. He's been around and making an impact.

OGLETREEHe's had the same impact on generations of students at Oregon at University of Southern California, at NYU. And I think that's what makes him so significant. He's always had students first, and I've been crying all night. But I know he's looking down on me and saying, it's time to get back to business, to laugh and joke and celebrate my life, and not to mourn my death. And that's what I'm going to do.

NNAMDICharles Ogletree, thank you so much for joining us.

OGLETREEAlways a pleasure.

NNAMDICharles Ogletree is professor of law and director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School. He joined us to talk about the late Derrick Bell, the first African-American professor at Harvard Law School. If you'd like to join the conversation, if you have comments about the passing of Derrick Bell, Fred Shuttlesworth or Steve Jobs, 800-433-8850 is the number to call.

NNAMDISteve Jobs, 800-433-8850 is the number to call, 800-433-8850. Yesterday was marked by the passing three individuals who all changed history and who were all iconoclasts. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and Derrick Bell. Fred Shuttlesworth, he was born in March of 1922. He grew up in Birmingham.

NNAMDIHe became most famous for his work in civil rights and because he was the individual who persuaded Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. to come to Birmingham, AL in the mid-1950s to lead the Birmingham bus boycott that made household names of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks, but did not make a household name nationally of Fred Shuttlesworth, even though long before then and long after then Fred Shuttlesworth was active in the Civil Rights Movement.

NNAMDIIn December of 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the segregation of buses in Montgomery, AL was illegal, he announced, and that he would challenge other discriminatory laws in court. On Christmas Day that year, 15 sticks of dynamite exploded between Fred Shuttlesworth's bedroom window. The floor was blown out from under him, but he fortunately only received a bump on the head.

NNAMDIIn 1957, when he tried to enroll his children in a white school, he was beaten unconscious with chains, baseball bats and brass knuckles by a Ku Klux Klan mob. His wife was stabbed in the hip. In 1961, he became pastor of a Baptist church in Cincinnati, but continued his civil rights work in Birmingham for years afterwards. There was an interesting piece in some newspaper today about a reporter in Cincinnati who met Fred Shuttlesworth in 1991.

NNAMDIA white reporter who was actually a sports reporter, who Fred Shuttlesworth ended up mentoring in several respects, putting contacts for that reporter's coverage of sports. And the reporter said that Reverend Shuttlesworth was so humble that he never told the reporter about his own fairly stellar history in the civil rights movement. He was one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He served as its interim director in 2004.

NNAMDIAnd after a stroke in 2007, he moved back to Birmingham where the airport has been named in his honor. His daughter Caroline Shuttlesworth is a professor here at Howard University, although I'm pretty sure she is in Birmingham, AL right now. But the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, an icon in his own right. And, of course, we all know what made the major news not only in the United States but around the world was the passing of Apple founder Steve Jobs at 56 years old.

NNAMDIJoining us right now by telephone is Bill Harlow. He is one of our Computer Guys and Gal here. He's a former Apple genius. He works on Macs and PCs at Mid-Atlantic Consulting. He appears, as you know, on the First Tech Tuesday of every month. Bill Harlow, thank you for joining us.

MR. BILL HARLOWWell, thank you, Kojo. It seems like we just talked a few days ago.

NNAMDIIt seems like that because we did talk two days ago. Bill, regular listeners to the Computer Guys and Gal certainly know that Steve Jobs changed your life. How and when did you first become aware of Apple products?

HARLOWWell, I actually went to a pretty nice school in Newton, MA growing up and we had Apple 2Es in the classroom. At home, we had Atari computers so I got to play with those. So, to me, at the time they were just computers. I mean, they were fun. We got to play Oregon Trail on them. You know, I got to attempt to program and logo and a few other things. Actually, it was when the Macintosh came out that I really sort of, you know, sort of -- I mean, it was a revolutionary product and it was certainly for me.

HARLOWI have sort of a creative -- I still do. And I love creating art on computers as a kid and the Mac, when Mac came, my father had one in 1986. I mean, it was a Mac Plus. I will sit there for hours at the Mac. I just click pixel by pixel to create an illustration, artwork, whatever. And I just thought it was the coolest thing. It was black and white, but it was such a high-resolution screen and the program was so easy to use that I can just work on that all day.

NNAMDIBut it seems that not only from your school, you also inherited your preference for Apple products from your father.

HARLOWI did. And, you know, it's funny because the Mac's have -- especially when they weren't nearly as popular, when Apple was struggling, Mac's were often considered the domain solely of, you know, the art-y types. And, you know, my father has a machining fabrication shop and when he took over that business, it was around the time the Mac came out and they had number of PC compatible computers in the office.

HARLOWAnd I don’t remember where exactly but he got a chance to actually try out the Macintosh, in person, and of course, you know, this was in the mid '80s and you know, all computers are expensive. The Mac's certainly were very expensive. But having struggled with, you know, tech space, database programs and various other -- word processing programs, various other tools, seeing something with a graphical user interface and a mouse, something you have to click and drag something.

HARLOWI think it took him all of five minutes to look at that and say, yeah, we're getting those for my office. And he is looking -- what kind of converted his business and converted me into being a long time Mac user.

NNAMDISteve Jobs gets a lot of credit for making products that people love, but you wish he got more attention for his love of design. What do you mean by that?

HARLOWWell, it's funny because a lot of people will look at an iPhone or a MacBook or an iMac and say, oh, that's a pretty computer. And, you know, to me -- and certainly to Steve Jobs, design -- as he even said it. It's not how it looks, it's how it works. So, you know, you design from the inside out. You design from the goals, the user experience, how it's going to work, how it's all going to come together.

HARLOWAnd design two is not just, you know, taking any feature and putting it in a box or just piling on features. You know, it's about knowing what to leave out. Or at least, in this case, since the target was focus and simplicity, you know, picking the right things to leave in, so that the person using it can appreciate the focus and simplicity and, you know, get to the task at hand.

HARLOWAnd I don't think he gets enough credit for that. I mean, it's -- there is so many products that Apple puts out but, yeah, their computing products, you can certainly buy, you know, other phones that work like an iPhone, but they're just not the same. There's something about that focus that makes these products (word?) use.

NNAMDIAnd we often forget the design is also about problem solving, is it not?

HARLOWIt is. And that's what really what Apple focuses on. You look -- well, let's look at the original iPhone when it came out in 2007. Up to that point, we hadn't had a touch screen that really had that immediate responsiveness to it. Phones certainly didn't look like the iPhone. They were not full screen devices. They were typically a device with a smaller screen. The rest was taken up by controls or keyboard.

HARLOWThere had been attempts at putting a web browser on a phone but they were always compromises. And the problem here was, how do you get a large enough color screen on your phone to be usable? How do you interact with a variety of different interfaces that aren't just typing but also scrolling and manipulating, you know, web pages, reading e-mail, playing music, watching video?

HARLOWAnd these are all things that they had to tackle. And the goal was, you know, full screen, no keyboard, so we better make an outstanding virtual keyboard that people will actually use.

NNAMDIAnd the mistake that Steve Jobs apparently did not make is the mistake of over designing. He was a pretty good editor.

HARLOWExactly. I mean, you look at so many Apple products. Look at Apple's mouse that's (word?) computer. There's no physical buttons visible on the mouse. But yet you've got the left click, right click, scrolling capabilities. You look at a typical Apple laptop and compare that to, let's say, any other laptop on the market and you notice, right away, the arch -- it's not covered in switches and doors. You can't even remove the battery in an Apple.

HARLOWAnd, you know, part of lives -- again, problem solving. You look at how much space had taken up on a frame put into a laptop to accommodate a changeable battery or just modules, in general. So, you know, by making the decision to edit out a lot of that (word?) and again focusing on what the key features are and how the vast majority of people are going to use these devices, they're able to focus on build quality and extended battery life.

NNAMDIBill Harlow, thank you so much for joining us.

HARLOWThank you, Kojo.

NNAMDIBill Harlow is a former Apple genius. He works on Mac's and Pc's at Mid-Atlantic Consulting. He appears on the first Tuesday of every month, on our show, The Computers Guys & Gal. Today, we have been noting the passing of three iconic -- last three icons, three men who changed history, Steve Jobs, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and Derrick Bell. We're going to take a short break. When we come back, we'll be talking about reverse mortgages. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.