It is a question for serious intellectual property discussion, and possibly the use by Sanders of his so-called white privilege in order to swoop in and steal Childress’s recipe.
Did Col. Sanders steal the KFC recipe from a black woman?
There have always been questions raised about the origins of Kentucky Fried Chicken’s (KFC) original recipe. The official story is that it was originated by KFC founder Colonel Harland David Sanders. However, there’s also a story that he stole the recipe from a black woman named Miss Childress.
Col. Sanders and Miss Childress
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Who was Miss Childress?
Miss Childress was a single black woman who was said to be a spectacular chef. Not much is known about who she was beyond her culinary skills.
However, the story goes that Colonel Sanders paid her $1,200 for her recipe after tasting her delicious chicken.
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Snapshot of the story
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After that, Sanders created a company out of the recipe and it became a multi-billion global empire.
It is said that as Sanders went on to fame and fortune, Miss Childress died in poverty.
No concrete evidence
This story may stoke anyone’s sense of outrage, but any righteous indignation should be tempered by the substance that there is no concrete evidence to prove this turn of events.
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Colonel Sanders
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It is a story fueled by racial animosity and suspicion based on America’s racist past which, as a consequence, led to a number of accusations being leveled at white entrepreneurs and chefs for allegedly taking recipes from African Americans without giving them due credit.
What is the truth?
The success of KFC maybe down to Miss Childress' recipe, or maybe not. However, it was well known to those who knew her that her recipe was a happy mix of herbs and spices used to season the chicken itself.
It is common knowledge that in the 1950's, America's best-tasting fried chicken, cornbread, greens, and other popular dishes were traditionally made by black women who were simple folk such as maids or family housekeepers. While white people, such as Sanders, had no clue about these types of cuisines.
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Though in the book “Colonel Sanders and the American Dream” by Joshua Ozersky, it is written that Sanders "tried to create an alternative reality in which the white planter not only ate the chicken, but implicity made it."
In his book, Ozersky writes that Sanders said it was the pressure cooker which led to the success of KFC which is not consistent with the actual flavours that went into the chicken.
When Sanders patented his pressure cooker process in 1966, he reportedly said that the method he had come up with allowed cooks in his restaurants to create "accurately controlled conditions of temperature, pressure, time, sizes of serving pieces, and the amount and composition of breading used" to make chicken of surpassing taste and texture.
However, anyone will agree that KFC had less to with the pressure cooker and more to do with culinary skills of expert black chef called Childress.
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