Luther Laflin Chambliss was born in Dadeville, Alabama to Clara and Green Chambliss, both were born in Alabama in slavery. Once out of slavery, his parents owned a prosperous farm and other holdings in Dadeville. After attending a private school founded in Dadeville by white Methodist missionaries, as well as at other State and private schools in Alabama, Chambliss entered Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C.. He graduated cum laude in 1907. After graduation, he came back to Alabama and started his law practice in Birmingham. In 1911, he was admitted to the Alabama State Bar when Chief Justice J.R. Dowdell and the six associate justices of the Supreme Court of Alabama issued his license to engage full practice as an "Attorney-at-Law and Solicitor in Chancery in all the Courts of Law and Equity in this State." He became the first African American attorney in Birmingham to be so accredited.
Until his death in 1934, he continued his practice of law from his office in the Pythian Temple. As a supporter of the NAACP movement, he held communication with the organization by giving advisory services from time to time and particularly in connection with the Scottsboro Boys case of the 1930s. It remained his philosophy that a client's inability to pay never entered into his decision to accept a case. He gave pro bono services to those who needed it and, like other people of the time, accepted garden and farm products in lieu of monetary compensation, especially during the Great Depression.
Nathan B. Young, Jr. was born November 28, 1894 in Tuskegee, Alabama. His father was Nathan B. Young, Sr. the famous president of Florida A & M College and Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. Young was raised and educated in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. In 1915, he graduated from Florida A & M College with his undergraduate degree. Afterwards, he attended Yale University Law School, graduating in 1918. On August 16, 1918 Young was admitted to the Alabama State Bar before the Alabama Supreme Court. He practiced law in Birmingham for a time before he and his wife, Mamie Mason, moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he continued to practice law.