Template:Featured/Elfreda Chatman
Elfreda Annmary Chatman was born in 1942 in Youngstown, Ohio. She became the first African American to join the religious order of the Sisters of the Humility of Mary. In May 1969 she was arrested with twenty-two others after participating in a welfare rights sit-in at the Mahoning County office in Youngstown, Ohio. She also argued for positive images of blackness in the Roman Catholic church (Williams 2022, 189 & 197).
Chatman received her BS from Youngstown State University in 1971 and was a primary school principal. In 1976 she earned an her MS in Library Science at Case Western Reserve University. She completed a graduate Certificate in the School of Library and Information Studies, University of California, Berkeley, in 1978 and then a PhD in 1983. Her doctoral dissertation, guided by Patrick Wilson was on "The diffusion of information among the working poor." She continued to use her exceptional interpersonal skills and careful attention to methodologies to conduct studies on information-related behavior in a series of underprivileged communities: poor people, the elderly, retired women, female inmates, and janitors.