Double alumnus Bill Aiken (’63, MBA ’70) (right) was one of the lucky Baruchians to have heard Martin Luther King Jr.’s City College/Baruch Commencement address on Jun. 12, 1963 (archival photo above). Did it change his life? Hard to say. But the pioneering African American CPA was honored by the Baruch student chapter of the National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) at the club’s first annual Alumni Reunion on Mar. 8, 2013. Aiken, who designed the NABA logo as the organization’s president in 1971, was the keynote speaker.

Over 50 years ago, friends and graduating accountancy majors William (“Bill”) Aiken (’63, MBA ’70) and Bert N. Mitchell (’63, MBA ’68, LLD [Hon.] ’88) were in the audience at City College’s Lewisohn Stadium on Jun. 12, 1963, to hear the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver their Commencement address.

“We really had no idea how momentous the occasion was,” says Aiken, who went on to a rewarding, achievement-filled career as a pioneering CPA. (Classmate Mitchell would also become a titan in the world of public accountancy, founding—in 1974—Mitchell & Titus, one of the country’s most preeminent minority-controlled CPA firms.)

Today, Aiken realizes just how special that Commencement memory is. Of seeing the Oscar-nominated 2014 film Selma a few weeks ago, the double alumnus says, “I remember practically everything that happened in that movie when it was happening . . . . We need to remember the struggles. Opportunities didn’t just happen.”

On that June day in 1963, Aiken would little imagine how many barriers he’d overcome and help others to overcome throughout his five-decades-long career in the field of public accountancy.

Read Our Full Profile: CPA Bill Aiken (’63, MBA ’70) on the African American Experience in Public Accountancy

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