The Incident That Destroyed The Real Colonel Sanders' Law Career

When your career track record includes serving as a soldier in Cuba, working as a tire salesman, a streetcar conductor, and then performing the duties of a midwife, among others, like our dear old Colonel Harland Sanders, the term "Jack of All Trades" comes to mind. This title, however, is attached to the stigma "Master of None." If it weren't for the Sanders magnum opus (KFC), our memories of him would only have been of his shortcomings (if we remembered him at all).

Flight footedness was not his only shortcoming; the issue at the base of his character seemed to be his short fuse and his inclination to get into brawls. Was it because trouble came looking for him, or was he by nature a contentious individual? History portrays him to have been a scuffler, having lost a few jobs in his life for bad behavior.

Sanders was once sacked from an insurance company for insubordination, and another time he got into a gunfight over a painted sign: in this instance, one person was killed and another wounded, though Sanders was ultimately found not responsible for the killing. He was no stranger to the justice system, either; One of his more memorable deeds was when he sued the KFC franchise (his brainchild) after selling it, but it was another courtroom spat that derailed his once-promising law career.

For all his flaws, Colonel Sanders showed an inherent capacity for persistence, and as history suggests, he was not without dreams or passion. While picking up various odd jobs in Little Rock, Arkansas, Sanders filled his nights studying law through correspondence courses, per the Van Trump Report.

As a testimony to his tenacity, he actually passed the bar and practiced as a Justice of the Peace in Little Rock for a full three years, per History Daily. As fate would have it, his fiery temper reared its head again, and this time he got into a physical fight with his client while in court. He then found himself in the dock, possibly on charges of assault and battery, per Your Dictionary, but was found innocent. Be that as it may, the rumpus brought his law career to an abrupt halt.

Retrospectively, one has to consider that if it were not for that fateful courtroom fracas, humanity would have toiled (or flourished) through life minus KFC.