Field Guide: Chickens

A global bird turned Southern icon

Photo by Finn Mund on Unsplash

Here is a short list of famous Southerners who lent their name and likeness to fried-chicken joints in the late 1960s: gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, Grand Ole Opry comedian Minnie Pearl, country singers Eddy Arnold and Little Jimmie Dickins (separate restaurants), and both the Queen and the Godfather of Soul, Aretha Franklin and James Brown.

You can blame Kentucky Fried Chicken for the sudden rush. Launched as a single Shell gas station serving slow pan-fried chicken legs, by 1966, when the brand went public, it had grown into the country’s largest commercial food-service operation. Only the military served more food. Founder Harland Sanders—not a Army colonel, just the recipient of a peculiar Kentucky gubernatorial honorarium—had already sold his stake, though he still served as the dapper, string-tied public face of the company, helping cement the image of finger-lickin’ chicken as a particularly Southern food.