William D. Chappelle
William David Chappelle was an American educationalist and bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Chappelle served as president of Allen University, an historically black university in Columbia, South Carolina, from 1897 to 1899 and served as the chairman of its board of trustees from 1916 to 1925.
Chappelle was born enslaved in 1857 in Winnsboro, South Carolina, one of the eleven children of Henry and Patsy McCory Chappelle.
After the death of his first wife, he married Rosina C. Palmer, who had contributed an essay as a young woman to what the Library of Congress describes as "a collection of essays by African American authors designed to encourage diligence, temperance, and religion among young African Americans."
His father-in-law was Robert John Palmer, one of South Carolina's black legislators during the Reconstruction era.
On March 13, 1918, Bishop Chappelle led a delegation from the bishops' council of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
to meet Democratic President Woodrow Wilson at the White House. The delegation came to protest the mounting wave of anti-black violence and hysteria accompanying the Great Migration, including numerous lynchings and other mob violence. Wilson took no action.
One of his sons, W.D. Chappelle, Jr., was a physician and surgeon who opened the People’s Infirmary around 1915, a small hospital and surgery practice in Columbia, South Carolina during a time when segregation prevented many African Americans from having access to healthcare.
His great-grandson is stand-up comedian Dave Chappelle.Attribution
