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African American Life: A Personal Perspective

Location/County: Charleston, Kanawha
July 26, 2018

On Thursday, July 26, 2018, Sim E. Fryson will be the speaker in the third program of the 2018 Block Speaker Series of “African American Life: A Personal Perspective” in the Archives and History Library in the Culture Center in Charleston. The program will begin at 6:00 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

A native of Charleston, Sim Fryson is the sixth of eight children born to the late Sim Fryson and Dorothy Hawkins Fryson. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in education from West Virginia State College and an associate degree in business and marketing from the University of Detroit through the General Motors Institute. Fryson served four years in the United States Air Force and is a veteran of the Vietnam War.

Fryson began his automobile career while attending college by selling used cars on a small independent used car lot. He then became a sales person at C & O Motors, the largest automobile dealership in West Virginia. He was the first black person in West Virginia to become a new car sales person, F & I manager, sales manager, and general sales manager. In 1995, he became president and CEO of Sim Fryson Motor Company in Ashland, Kentucky, and most recently he owned a dealership in South Charleston. Fryson has received numerous awards and honors, including WSAZ Hometown Hero, and his company was named by Black Enterprise magazine as one of the top 100 black businesses in the country from 1985 to 1989 and again from 1995 to 2005.

He is married to Susan Fryson and they have three children, Brent, Sydnei, and Sierra. He is a Seventh-Day Adventist Christian and is elder at the Shiloh Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Huntington, West Virginia.

Participants may park behind the Culture Center after 5:00 p.m. on July 26 and enter the building at the back loading dock area. There also is limited handicapped parking available in the new bus turnaround.

For additional information, contact the Archives and History Library at (304) 558-0230.