Phelps was born in Alabama, the youngest of six children of a Catholic household. She became an Adrian Dominican Sister in 1959.
Phelps pursued her PhD in systematic theology from Catholic University of America, publishing her dissertation in 1989 as The Mission Ecclesiology of John R. Slattery. She has taught at Loyola University, Chicago and Seattle University, and for eight years as Director of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies and the Katharine Drexel Professor of Systematic Theology at Xavier University in New Orleans.
Phelps helped to restart the annual meetings of Black Catholic Theological Symposium in 1991, after two first meetings in 1978 and 1979.

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