Barbara Harris Quotes

Barbara Clementine Harris was the first woman ordained a bishop in the Anglican Communion. Harris attended the Philadelphia High School for Girls. There, she excelled in music and wrote a weekly column for the Philadelphia version of the Pittsburgh Courier called High School Notes by Bobbi. After graduation, Harris attended the Charles Morris Price School of Advertising and Journalism in Philadelphia where she earned a certificate in 1950. Harris was ordained Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts on February 11, 1989. As the first woman bishop and an African-American, she received death threats and obscene messages. Harris retired from this position in Boston in 2003. She was succeeded as bishop suffragan by another African American woman, Gayle Elizabeth Harris. Harris served as Assisting Bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC until 2007, and as president of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company, publishers of The Witness magazine.