His maternal grandmother, Beatrice (Murray), was born in Grenada, and was a real estate broker and civil rights activist. His other grandparents were all African-American. Dave's paternal great-grandfather, William D. Chappelle (William David Chappelle), was an educationalist, a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and President of Allen University. A paternal great-great-grandfather, Robert J. Palmer, was a land-owning merchant, who was a member of the South Carolina Legislature, then majority black, during Reconstruction.