Born in Mount Gilead, North Carolina, in 1936, Chambers grew up amid the racism of the Jim Crow-era South. One of the defining moments of Chambers' life came early , when his father's auto repair business became a target of racial injustice in 1948 . Because of this experience Chambers vowed to make a difference- pursuing a career that would help end the inequalities of segregation and discrimination. He graduated high school the same month as the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling and entered North Carolina College (now NC Central University). In 1959, Chambers continued his commitment to education as one of only a handful of African American students admitted to the School of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He quickly made his mark, becoming the first African American editor-in-chief of the law review and graduating first in his class.

Fifteen years after the pivotal childhood event that set him on a course toward his civil rights career, Thurgood Marshall selected Chambers as the first intern of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). Just a year later, Chambers opened the first integrated law firm in North Carolina. "The experience [with the LDF] exposed me to real practice of law.I hadn't had anything like that in law school," admits Chambers. "That is how one might develop legal theories to deal with unexpected and unusual situations."

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