Julius Caesar Chappelle (c. 1852 – January 27, 1904) was an American Republican Party politician who was born into slavery in South Carolina and served in the Massachusetts General Court.

[3][4] He was the first African-American to serve on the Massachusetts Republican State Committee[5] and an active supporter of civil rights and consumer protection.

[7] There is evidence that during very early childhood Julius Chappelle and at least one of his brothers may have been moved from South Carolina to two other plantations in different states before being brought back to Newberry County.

[10] The Ku Klux Klan had numerous chapters that attacked freedmen to maintain white supremacy and establish dominance.

Lewis Hayden helped bring Chappelle into the Republican Party and started him out giving him the task to register people to vote.

[14][15] In the early 1880s, he was nominated as a Republican candidate for the state legislature from Boston's Ninth Ward, including the Beacon Hill area, and was elected for four terms from 1883 to 1886.

[20] The next day, the Republican caucus issued a statement denouncing the story and claiming it was the prerogative of Chappelle's defeated opponent to bequeath his chair to whom he chose.

The New York Globe wrote, "Chappelle will, in the opinion of many white and colored voters, be elected in spite of such mean tricks.

[citation needed] In 1884, Chappelle narrowly defeated Democrat Charles Albert Prince, son of Boston Mayor Frederick O.

.the stickers for one of the candidates for senator were either so broad or so carelessly pasted upon the ballot that it covered the title of the vote for representative printed beneath thereon.

[32] Chappelle served three one-year terms on the state committee of the Massachusetts Republican Party, representing Boston's Fifth Ward from 1889.

In early August 1890, Chappelle spoke about the right of blacks to vote in every United States state, to an "enthusiastic" meeting in Boston's Faneuil Hall to support the Federal Elections Bill:"I regret the occasion of such a meeting as this for the reason that the principles of this bill were placed upon the Republican platform when we nominated our present President, and who, in this message to Congress, recommended the principles of such a measure.

We hear through the Independent and Democratic press that there is a sufficient number of weak-kneed Republicans to defeat the passage of this bill and am pleased to find so many of our leading business men willing to support it.

[38] During the 1890s, some African American activists in Boston supported enacting policies against the commercial sale of alcohol, and the Prohibition Party tried to win over those voters in Massachusetts.

Chappelle's friend, African-American Boston City Councillor William Oscar Armstrong, was their chief organizer.

[42] In 1895, Chappelle was appointed to a committee of the Douglass Club to lobby for liquor licenses to be granted to African-American business owners.

[6] Julius's nephew Pat Chappelle (son of Lewis) owned The Rabbit's Foot Company, a leading vaudeville show, and was known as the "black P.T.

[45] In mid-January 1898, Chappelle was falsely accused by an African-American porter of buying stolen shoes and was acquitted after approximately a month.

Julius C. Chappelle and his wife attended the popular "6th Annual Ball of Headwaiters of Young's Hotel " at Horticultural Hall in 1883.

[48][49] In 1889, Chappelle presided over a meeting at the Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church concerning the education of southern African-Americans.

"[52] Julius C. Chappelle died in 1904 in Boston after a long illness, survived by his wife Elizabeth and daughter Lillian.

[3][4] His Boston Daily Globe obituary said that "Julius Caesar Chappelle was a unique political character in the Republican party of the state.