Energy Justice, Electric Cooperatives, and the Postplantation Fight for Freedom

Rural electric cooperatives—also known as electric membership corporations (EMCs)—emerged in the 1930s to electrify rural areas not served by for-profit utilities. Today, EMCs power 56% of the US landmass, including 92% of persistent-poverty counties. In Georgia, EMCs are regulated only by elected boards, who govern costs, investments, and energy mix but are unlikely to reflect the demographic diversity of their membership and have been documented to suppress voices of Black member-owners. This article documents a 2022–24 energy justice initiative in EMCs jointly led by the authors—one an energy justice organizer and urban anthropology PhD candidate, the other a sociocultural anthropology professor. It documents how Black activists and electric cooperative members addressed racial disparities in the governance and finances of EMCs and shows that the expansion of electricity rights and resources through cooperative structures has helped root racialized hierarchies more deeply. The article argues that white supremacy in rural cooperatives is both an end and a means that must be deobfuscated and dismantled, not just by including Black people in the existing process but also by changing the very decision-making processes that sustain and entrench extraction through energy systems.