Others experience unprecedented growth in the 1950s (Redeemer, Bryn Mawr, 1851). Bishop Oliver J. Hart (1943-1963) wrestled with the implications of suburbanization. While the city parishes supported the creation of parishes and missions outside of Philadelphia the generation or two before, these congregations outside the city did not always empathize with the social and economic problems of their urban brethren. African Americans have worshipped in the Diocese of Pennsylvania since its inception. As slaves and free persons, they attended services at some of its most venerable congregations. Absalom Jones, the founder with Richard Allen of the Free African Society in 1787, organized Saint Thomas, the first independent black church in America, in 1794. Jones became an Episcopal deacon in 1795 and a priest in 1804. All-black congregations were not common in Philadelphia until the city's African American population expanded in the first half of the twentieth century. By 1980 the parish Jones once led (known today as the African Episcopal Church of Saint Thomas) had become one of the largest (black or white) in the Diocese. Many black Episcopalians now worshiped by themselves in parishes that had once been all white or integrated (Church of the Advocate, Philadelphia, 1886). Until Robert L. DeWitt (1964-1973) became its twelfth bishop in 1964, the Diocese of Pennsylvania largely ignored the civil rights movement. During his nine years at the helm, DeWitt insisted that the Diocese acknowledge and respond to the racism and discrimination in its midst. Troubled by riots in Philadelphia and Chester, he supported an ecumenical effort to desegregate Girard College, a boarding school for orphan boys that bore the name of its nineteenth-century benefactor. He even lent his support to the idea that the best way to atone for slavery was through "reparations." DeWitt's successor, Lyman L. Ogilby (1974-1988), inherited a Diocese that was certainly more attuned to issues of inequality and social justice than it once had been. This new sensitivity manifested itself in July 1974 when the first women to become Episcopal priests were ordained in Philadelphia. The ceremony took place at the Church of the Advocate whose rector, the Reverend Paul M. Washington, was also an important civil rights leader. Ogilby did not participate, but neither did he stand in the way. By then, laywomen had begun to play a significant role in the church, serving on vestries and as delegates to the diocesan conventions. In 1986, St.