"Barbara Clementine Harris"(1930)

Was born in Philadelphia Pennsylvania to Walter and Beatrice (price) Harris on June,12.After graduating from the Charles Morris Price School of Advertising and Journalism,she joined

Joseph V.Baker Associates,Inc., a black owned public relations firm in Philadelphia.She became president of the company in 1958 but left ten years later to become director of the Community Relations Department of the Sun Oil Company.Meanwhile, Barbara,an Episcopalian,was a volunteer at her church and in local jails and prisons.In 1960 she joined the activist Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia.That Church had become a center for the civil rights movement then evolving in Philadelphia,supported both local protests and the national movement.She led a church delegation that marched with Dr.Martin Luther King in Selma in 1965.Three years later the church hosted a national convention of the Black Panther Party (BPP),which attracted ten thousand people.She remained active locally,assisting the poor in a "soap kitchen"and orphanages,including one she help to desegregate.Despite her church leadership she noted that the national Episcopal Church discriminated against women in its own ranks.Late as 1970 they could become deacons, but not priests.She and others opposed this policy.In 1976,the Episcopal Church voted to admit women as priests.About the same time,Barbara decided to study for the priesthood.She left her job at Sun Oil to devote full time to her religious training.After completing a seminary course,in the evenings,on weekends,and on vacations,she was ordained a priest in October 1980.She served as priest-in-charge of St.Augustine of Hippo Church in Norristown,Pennsylvania from 1980 to 1984.She was also a chaplain in the Philadelphia County prison during those years.In 1984 she was named executive director of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company.There she gained national notice as columnist,editor,and publisher of The Witness,an independent,liberal,church periodical.In her writings Barbara attacked all forms of racial,economic,and political injustices.Barbara was also a member of the Union of Black Episcopalians and president of the Episcopal Urban Caucus.In 1988 Anglican bishops from throughout the world met in Canterbury,England for the Lambeth Conference,the once-a-decade gathering of the international Anglican hierarchy.They agreed,over strong objections of many conservatives,to leave the question of the ordination of female bishops up to each national church.On September 24,1988,the U.S. Episcopal Church voted by a slim margin to elect Barbara Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Eastern Massachusetts,where she had moved in 1984.On February  11, 1989,she was consecrated a bishop,the first woman to be ordained in the worldwide Anglican Church.As Bishop,Barbara continued to advocate for diversity in the Episcopal Church and the entire Anglican community.Her command of a 96,000- member Boston-Based diocese now made her a powerful voice in deciding church policy and programs.She retired on November 1,2002.In 2010,she suffered a stroke in her home in Massachusetts.Barbara appears to have made a a full recovery and preached at an ecumenical worship service in the historic Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs Massachusetts on Sunday September 5,2010.Her sermon was entitled, "It Isn't Being Green."