From complete exclusion to minimal inclusion: African Americans and the public accounting industry, 1965–1988

African Americans have always been severely under-represented among certified public accountants. After active exclusion for the first several decades of this century, in 1965 African Americans comprised only 0.1% of CPAs. Twenty-five years later, African Americans comprised close to 1% of CPAs, still far below their 12% representation in the population. This paper examines the accounting industry's response to the change in public expectations regarding equal employment opportunity that followed the civil rights movement. The study reveals that, in the late 1960s and early 1970s when support for equal opportunity was at its peak, the industry ended its complete exclusion and engaged in some visible efforts to recruit African Americans. However, even these minimal efforts waned with the decline in emphasis on fair employment in the 1980s.