Miss Rural Electrification

Jan Brown, a student at Angelo State College in Texas, was named "Miss Rural Electrification of 1966" at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association's (NRECA) annual meeting in Las Vegas. Brown represented the Central Texas Electrical Co-Op at Fredericksburg. The cover story noted that she "proved that beauty and brains go admirably together." If we view pageants not merely as trivial or exploitative, but as civic rituals that produce political subjects, then we can see Brown as the feminine embodiment of the values of the co-op she represented.

According to its website, NRECA was organized in 1942 to overcome shortages of electric construction materials during WWII, get insurance for newly constructed rural electrical cooperatives and "mitigate wholesale power problems." "Rural Electrification: Non-Partisan, Non-Profit, One-Cent Electricity for Rural America," was the Association's monthly publication. Today, NRECA represents "the national interests of cooperative electric utilities and the consumers they serve." They still publish "Rural Electric Magazine" on a monthly basis.

We found this issue in the Grace McDonald papers (BANC MSS 85/139). McDonald, a consumer advocate, helped form the California Farm Research and Legislative Committee and was Executive Secretary of the California Farmer Consumer Information Committee. In addition to lobbying on behalf of farm laborers, McDonald also worked on occupational health and safety issues. Her 1951 novel, "Swing Shift," written under the pseudonym Margaret Graham, told the story of organized and unorganized railroad men, miners and tobacco workers.

--- M. Bryer