In the early 1970s, several esteemed leaders in the Birmingham area including then Miles College President W. Clyde Williams; Bishop of the Fifth Episcopal District of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Chester A. Kirkendoll, who served as chairman of the Miles College Trustee Board; Judge J. Richmond Pearson, then an Alabama state senator, and past chairman of the trustee board, and Arthur D. Shores, noted Civil Rights attorney, and others mobilized and provided the impetus for Miles Law School.