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7/1/2014
Americans may be the most hopeful people on earth. It was hope, after all, that brought the colonists to these shores in the first place.
Hope for freedom and selfdetermination created this nation, when the colonists revolted against (and prevailed over) the most powerful empire on earth.
Hope for a better life motivated early Americans to pack their bare necessities into wagons and roll westward to claim land, despite the hardships and uncertainty.
Hope brought Americans through the Great Depression, two world wars, assassinations, the threat of nuclear conflict and terrorist attacks.
Hope powered the leaders of the civil rights movement, and we are a better society today for their perseverance and vision in the face of violent resistance.
You may not realize it, but hope led to the formation of your electric power association. Back in the early 1900s, rural Mississippians literally lived in the dark while the city folk enjoyed electric lights and appliances. Lacking electric power, the rural lifestyle was essentially unchanged from the century before.
Hoping for a more prosperous, more comfortable life, rural Mississippians took it upon themselves to obtain electricity by forming their own local electric power association. Using funds borrowed from the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), they built distribution systems and wired their homes to receive electric power. Each person who joined the electric power association, a consumerowned cooperative, became an owner of the association.
On a winter morning in January 1934, hope was symbolized by the setting of a single utility pole into Pontotoc County soil. The mayor of Pontotoc proclaimed a holiday to mark the occasion. Schools released students and everyone gathered to watch the linemen erect the pole— the first one set in Mississippi to bring TVA electricity to rural residents in northeastern counties.
As the utility pole rose higher, so did the hopes of those who watched. Less than 1 percent of Mississippi’s rural homes and farms had electric service at that time. Rural Mississippians knew affordable, reliable electric service was their key to a better life and farm productivity. They dared to hope even during the Great Depression.
The rural electrification movement quickly swept the state, culminating in the formation of 26 electric power associations. True to their founders’ vision, each one is still a memberowned cooperative whose sole mission is service.
For me, Independence Day is a reminder of what “we the people” can accomplish when shared hope is our motivation.
