Dr. Larzette Hale, who was the first Black American female to become a CPA in the state of Georgia and the first to earn a PhD in accounting, has died.
Dr. Hale died in the early part of February 2015 at the age of 94. The announcement of her death came shortly after New York lost its first Black-American CPA, Bernadine Gines. (See:
“The profession has lost two amazing women in a shockingly short window. To my knowledge, they were the only two African-American women alive who earned their CPAs before 1960,” stated Dr. Theresa Hammond, who is a professor at San Francisco State University in the Department of Accounting and the author of, A White-Collar Profession: African-American CPAs since 1921.
Over the course of 43 years, Dr. Hale worked as an accountant, a college professor and a researcher. She taught at Clark College and was a professor emeritus of accounting at Utah State University, where she led its school of accounting for more than 13 years.
She was also elected president of the American Woman’s Society of Certified Public Accountants, and became the first African American appointed to the Utah Board of Regents of Higher Education.
