EXAMINING FRANK ADAIR JR. AS AN AFRICAN AMERICAN CPA PIONEER: A HISTORICAL NOTE

ABSTRACT In 1932, Frank Adair Jr. achieved his Certified Public Accountant (CPA) status as the sixth African American CPA in the US and only the second in the Deep South. Although his active professional career was brief (5 years), it typifies not only the difficulty experienced by an African American achieving this designation in the Jim Crow South, but also the factors that were necessary for such an achievement to occur in that time period. First, Adair Jr. practiced in a dynamic and vibrant segregated business community. Second, he was educated at a black college. An African American who wanted to stay in the Deep South would have had no other option. Third, he benefitted from a strong professional mentoring relationship that enabled him to forge his career path. Inadvertently, Adair Jr. was omitted from the 1990 NABA report of the first one hundred African American CPAs. This historical note seeks to correct that omission.