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This paper provides insights into societal influences on the slowly-developing inclusion of minorities in the public accounting profession and comments upon the utilization of oral history as method in a research study conducted into the experiences of the first African-American man to be certified as a CPA in Arkansas. While there is no evidence in 1970-era Arkansas of the types of institutional impediments to certification of African-Americans described in the book A White-Collar Profession (Hammond, 2002), the experience of one man suggests that social conditions may contribute to the low incidence of the choice of a career in public accounting by African Americans in the mid-20th century including lack of exposure to CPA role models with a resulting lack of familiarity with the profession and low financial incentive to enter the profession due to lack of suitable a client base.