Empowering Communities

Empowering Communities

How Electric Cooperatives Transformed Rural South Carolina

  • Author: Ford, Lacy K.; Bailey, Jared; Clyburn, James E.
  • Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
  • ISBN: 9781643362687
  • eISBN Pdf: 9781643362700
  • Place of publication:  South Carolina , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2022
  • Month: February
  • DDC: 333.793/209757
  • Language: English

Early in the twentieth century, for-profit companies such as Duke Power and South Carolina Electric and Gas brought electricity to populous cities and towns across South Carolina, while rural areas remained in the dark. It was not until the advent of publicly owned electric cooperatives in the 1930s that the South Carolina countryside was gradually introduced to the conveniences of life with electricity. Today, electric cooperatives serve more than a quarter of South Carolina's citizens and more than seventy percent of the state's land area, bringing not only power but also high-speed broadband to rural communities.

The rise of "public" power—electricity serviced by member-owned cooperatives and sanctioned by federal and state legislation—is a complicated saga encompassing politics, law, finance, and rural economic development. Empowering Communities examines how the cooperatives helped bring fundamental and transformational change to the lives of rural people in South Carolina, from light to broadband.

James E. Clyburn, the majority whip of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina, provides a foreword.

  • Cover
  • EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • CONTENTS
  • FOREWORD
  • ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  • INTRODUCTION
  • CHAPTER 1. When the Lights Came On: Cooperatives Power the Countryside
  • CHAPTER 2. The Origins of Electric Cooperatives: Leading the Way for Rural Electrification in South Carolina
  • CHAPTER 3. Working the Lines: Duty and Danger
  • CHAPTER 4. Electricity and the Rural Home: Rural Families “Live Modern”
  • CHAPTER 5. South Carolina’s Electric Cooperatives and the Changing Role of Women, 1950s–1980s
  • CHAPTER 6. The Politics of Rural Electrification in the 1950s and 1960s: Serving the Needs of Their Members
  • CHAPTER 7. Public Policy and Electric Power in the Late Twentieth Century
  • CHAPTER 8. From Water Closets to Weatherization
  • CHAPTER 9. Cooperative Principles and Member Services
  • CHAPTER 10. Transparency, Accountability, and the Power of Democracy
  • EPILOGUE
  • NOTES
  • INDEX
  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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