ABSTRACT

This chapter shows that during the early parts of the 20th century, electricity service, far from being distributed equitably, was like other networked infrastructures employed as both a technology of rule and a producer of social and racial segregation and differentiation by white elites in small Southern cities. It provides evidence of the cultural and political dimensions, as well as the consequences, of the creation and use of energy infrastructures. The chapter examines the geography of requests for electricity service in the home between 1907 and 1923 by mapping the location of requests made before the Board of Commissioners. It shows that the Rocky Mount Board of Commissioners pursued a policy that deliberately steered electricity to white areas of town even when spreading electricity more broadly than would have been economically 'rational'. The chapter traces how the existence of a specifically municipally owned electric utility allowed for certain benefits to accrue to the town's white ruling class.