Chappell is author of two Civil Rights books and many articles. His most recent book, A Stone of Hope, Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, has been called one of the three or four most important books on the Civil Rights movement. The Atlantic Monthly goes on to say that Chappell makes a persuasive argument that revivalism engendered the Civil Rights movements solidarity, leadership, worldview and rhetoric and that the struggle against segregation triumphed owing not only to the religious view of southern blacks, but also to the religious views of southern whites.

The New York Times called his work, spectacular in its mix of rigor, daring and perceptiveness and intricate, dazzling in its reach fascinating at every turn.

Chappell is on the history faculty at the University of Arkansas. He earned a bachelor of arts degree from Yale University in 1982, and a PhD. in history from the University of Rochester.

Chappell also participated in the Friends Talking Series at St. Paul's. The panel included Charles Robinson, associate professor of history at the University of Arkansas, and author of Dangerous Liaisons: Sex and Love in the Segregated South, published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2003. Robinson won the Master Teacher Award at The University of Arkansas Fulbright College in 2003, and this year will receive the Alumni Associations award as the universitys teacher of the year. The Reverend Lowell Grisham, rector at St. Pauls, moderated the morning panel discussion in the Parish Hall.