Born in 1800 – Benjamin Franklin White, American composer, shape note “singing master”, and compiler of the shape note tunebook The Sacred Harp.

Also: English poet Stevie Smith.

Born in 1921 – Paulo Freire, Brazilian philosopher, theorist, and academic.

“Reading is not walking on the words; it’s grasping the soul of them.”

Born in 1921 – Alexander Schmemann, American priest of the Orthodox Church.

“Every evil screams only one message: ‘I am good.’”

Also, in 1876, Sherwood Anderson.

Born in 1917 – Jacob Lawrence, American artist.

Above: Panel 58 of Lawrence’s ‘Migration Series’: In the North the Negro had better educational facilities, 1940–41

Also: In 1860, Grandma Moses.

Clifford Robinson, American basketball player, died today.

Born in 1947 – Linda Thompson, English folk-rock singer-songwriter.

Listen to “A Heart Needs a Home” and “Walking on a Wire” with Richard Thompson.

Also, Dear Mary, from Thompson’s 2002 album Fashionably Late.

Born in 1876 – Ivan Bilibin, Russian illustrator and stage designer. Above: Illustration for the fairy tale “Vasilisa the Beautiful”, 1900

Also, in 1911 – E. F. Schumacher, German economist and statistician, who wrote, “Everywhere people ask: ‘What can I actually do?’ The answer is as simple as it is disconcerting: we can, each of us, work to put our own inner house in order. The guidance we need for this work cannot be found in science or technology, the value of which utterly depends on the ends they serve; but it can still be found in the traditional wisdom of mankind.”

RIP, Linda Manz.

Above: Richard Gere, Manz, and Brooke Adams in Terrence Malick’s 1978 film, Days of Heaven.

Born in 1921 – Alex Haley, American historian and author.

Above: Haley, at typwriter, with Malcolm X

“In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.”

Also: Erwin Chargaff

Born in 1848 – William Harnett, Irish-American painter and educator.

Above: After the Hunt, 1885.

Previously: Andrew Sullivan and Toumani Diabaté.