A History of Determination

In the profession’s early years, despite being highly educated, CPAs of color faced challenges in meeting the profession’s experience requirements and in practicing accountancy. “For most of the twentieth century, virtually no whites would hire and train an African American to become a CPA, justifying this by claiming that clients would not tolerate an African American’s involvement in their financial affairs,” says Theresa A. Hammond in her book A White-Collar Profession: African American Certified Public Accountants since 1921 (University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

For example, John Cromwell, the first black CPA, graduated with honors from Dartmouth College and earned a master’s degree but chose to teach high school math because of limited practice opportunities. Ultimately, in 1930 he became controller of Howard University.

Through the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, as the number of black CPAs grew slowly, they provided younger African Americans with opportunities to gain experience to sit for the CPA exam as well as practice accountancy. Arthur J. Wilson, the second African American CPA and the first in Illinois, gave that chance to many in Chicago, including Mary T. Washington, the first African American woman CPA, who eventually owned her own accounting practice (see her obituary ).

After Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration barred discrimination in federal government and federal contractor employment, some of its members met with Jesse Blayton, Georgia’s first black CPA and a Morehouse College professor who had established the college’s business department, to discuss New Deal programs from an African American perspective. Known as the “dean of Negro accountants” through his role as chair of Atlanta University’s accounting department and his position with the Colored Division of the National Youth Administration program, Blayton is credited with inspiring generations of black CPAs.

GAINING MOMENTUM
With the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, changes began. In the late 1960s, the AICPA founded the Committee on Recruitment from Minority Groups. In 1969 the Journal of Accountancy published the results of a study, “The Black Minority in the CPA Profession,” by committee member Bert N. Mitchell, CPA, that showed the ratio of blacks in the accounting profession—150 out of 100,000—was much lower than in law or medicine.

Mitchell himself graduated at the top of his accounting class at the City University of New York in 1963 and, like many minority CPAs at the time, gained practical experience working for small Jewish-owned CPA firms. But upon his graduation, “25 firms had refused to hire him, usually attributing their decision to their client’s attitudes,” Hammond says. He eventually found work as the first black employee of J.K. Lasser and Co., a national accounting firm, and later founded Mitchell & Titus LLP in New York.

Firms ultimately did begin hiring minority CPAs, recruiting at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Changes were necessary at these schools, however, because accreditation by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) requires that most of a school’s faculty have either a PhD or, in the case of accounting, a combination of a CPA certificate and an MBA, as well as limits on the teaching load. Many HBCUs could not meet the requirement in the 1960s.

With the help of a $600,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, CPA Milton Wilson, whose career included teaching stints at several HBCUs, revamped the Texas Southern University (TSU) business department, which had three instructors in 1947, by adding two full professors, five associate professors and four assistant professors. In 1967 TSU became the first HBCU to receive AACSB accreditation. Wilson’s success eventually led him to a position as the first dean of the Howard University School of Business, which earned its AACSB accreditation in 1980, making Wilson the only dean to lead two HBCUs to AACSB accreditation.

The AICPA committee on minority recruitment geared two early programs toward helping HBCUs increase the number of CPAs and PhDs on their faculties. A scholarship program provided funds to hire instructors on an interim basis so that promising individuals could pursue PhDs in accounting. A faculty summer seminar, focused on building teaching skills, served the needs of HBCUs and institutions with large Hispanic enrollment, and offered CPE credits and networking opportunities, says Dan Hobson, AICPA manager of minority initiatives.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, CPAs of color began to form their own networks. In 1969 the National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) formed to provide support for black accountants in public accounting firms (for information, go to www.nabainc.org ).

“A meeting was held in my living room,” recalls NABA founder Frank Ross, CPA, who would become a managing partner with KPMG, “and nine of us formed the association. The idea was to help each other achieve success, to develop a network and foster mentoring.” In the same era, Henry Wilfong started the National Association of Minority CPA Firms with a $12,000 grant from the Nixon administration’s Office of Minority Business Enterprises. “That really was a catalyst for the rapid growth of minority CPA firms in the 1970s,” because of the many networking opportunities it offered and its efforts to get government “set-aside work” for minority firms, Mitchell says.

In 1972 CPA Gilbert Vasquez helped found a group to help Latinos compete for government contracts and become active on AICPA committees, known today as the Association of Latino Professionals in Finance and Accounting (ALPFA). ALPFA ( www.alpfa.org ) currently is developing a Women of ALPFA program to address the special challenges that face Latino women. ALPFA CEO Manuel Espinosa says the group also is encouraging CPAs to become business leaders and consider pursuing careers as CFOs or CEOs. The organization’s focus on leadership and professional development is meant to help Latinos become confident they can be very successful, he says.

More recently, the National Asian American Society of Accountants was founded to strengthen networking opportunities and enhance Asian Americans’ influence in the profession, says founding member Maggie Sun. It includes members of firms of all sizes and representatives of other organizations, such as the National Council of Philippine American Canadian Accountants and the Chinese American Society of CPAs.

THE PROFESSION’S INITIATIVES
While much progress has been made, the percentage of minority CPAs still remains low. The AICPA’s Supply of Accounting Graduates and the Demand for Public Accounting Recruits showed that only 7% of CPAs employed by accounting firms were minorities, “highlighting that we are a long way from parity,” says the AICPA’s Hobson.

Over the past three decades, major AICPA initiatives have included raising awareness about the CPA profession in minority communities and increasing the number and visibility of role models through partnerships with groups such as INROADS and Management Leadership for Tomorrow—both of which seek to encourage minority participation in business. At the same time, the Institute’s “Be A Star in Business” advertising initiative and the “Start Here. Go Places” recruiting initiative “create an effective combination to expose young people of color to the accounting profession,” Hobson says.

CPAs OF COLOR AS TOMORROW’S BUSINESS LEADERS
Since the days of Jesse Blayton, accounting faculty members have served as mentors for minority CPAs. To that end, the AICPA Fellowships for Minority Doctoral Students program ( www.aicpa.org/members/ ) seeks to enable minorities to succeed in the profession and academia and to increase the number of minority role models for accounting students.

To help improve the retention of minority CPAs, Ross, who recently retired from KPMG, is heading up the new Howard University Center for Accounting Education, which will study the experiences of minority CPAs and implement programs based on that research. It will offer first-year accountants training focused on the soft skills they will need to be successful, including working in teams, building a network and “knowing what to expect in a high-powered environment with high-energy and high-achieving people around them,” says Ross. There also will be CPA exam and management training courses.

“If you stay longer in firms you have a better chance to be more successful,” says Ross, who became a KPMG partner in 1977 and managing partner of the Washington, D.C., office and the mid-Atlantic area in 1996. “To have a world-class workforce, you have to make sure you are dealing with the issues facing the minority groups,” he says.

THE RIGHT THING
What will it take to create change? “I see the effort to diversify the accounting profession as a combination of initiatives,” says George S. Willie, CPA, managing partner of Bert Smith & Co. in Washington, D.C., and a member of the AICPA board of directors. “Educators have to be an integral part of our efforts. There has to be an intensified outreach program to academia. The families of minority students must promote commerce, accounting and finance as alternatives to the ministry, medicine and law as important professions. Equally critical is the involvement of mature and accomplished finance and accounting professionals. Professionals of ethnic minorities are clear evidence that with hard work, the right relationships and the proper focus, there is much to be attained in the accounting profession.”

Change will be in the best interest of the profession as a whole. “Firms will benefit because striving for diversity is simply the right thing to do,” says Quinton Booker, CPA, professor and chairman of the accounting department at Jackson State University, Mississippi. “In the long run, I have never known anything other than good to be derived from doing the right thing. And firms serve diverse clients. Diversity in the ranks at the firm has the potential for a better connection when offering services to a diverse client base.”

The bottom line, says Booker, is that the profession needs talent to sustain itself. “Professions flourish not because of their ability to handle today’s challenges, although this is important. Professions flourish when they have the intellectual capital to anticipate and prepare for what lies ahead. A well-qualified, diverse profession will allow us to continue to exist in the future.”

Phaedra Brotherton is a freelance writer.