Wilfred Denniston Wood KA (born 15 June 1936) is a Barbadian-British Anglican who was the Bishop of Croydon from 1985 to 2003 (and the first area bishop there from 1991), the first black bishop in the Church of England. He came second in the "100 Great Black Britons" list in 2004. Life Born in Barbados to Wilfred Coward and Elsie Elmira Wood, Wood initially planned a career in Barbados politics, but felt called to the priesthood and entered Codrington College. He was ordained a deacon on the island, then in England as a priest in St Paul's Cathedral, London, in 1962, first serving as curate at St Stephen's Church, Shepherd's Bush. He married Ina Smith in 1966. They have two daughters and three sons. He soon came to wider attention in the United Kingdom for speaking out on racial justice, and published (with John D. H. Downing) Vicious Circle in 1968, insisting that the churches urgently engage in anti-racist activism. He was elected president of the Institute of Race Relations in 1971, an academic research body which also campaigned for racial justice. In 1974 he joined the Diocese of Southwark, where he was appointed Vicar of St Laurence, Catford. In 1977 he was appointed Rural Dean of East Lewisham and Honorary Canon of Southwark Cathedral. He was Archdeacon of Southwark from 1982 until his consecration as area Bishop of Croydon in 1985, where he oversaw the 102 parishes of the Croydon Episcopal Area and assisted the Bishop of Southwark. Wood was a champion for racial justice, launching several initiatives and serving on many committees. In 1968, Wood and colleagues submitted proposals for the replacement of the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants (NCCI) with a Community Relations Commission that came to be known as "the Wood Proposals". The proposals called for some members to be directly elected by minority ethnic associations. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and a visit to London by his widow Coretta in 1969, he was instrumental with Canon L. John Collins in founding the UK's Martin Luther King Fund and Foundation. In 1992 he co-sponsored with David Sheppard, the then Bishop of Liverpool, a new set of race equality principles for employers, which became known as the "Wood-Sheppard Principles". He was Moderator of the Southwark Diocesan Race Relations Commission, the first of its kind in the Church of England, from its foundation.