{"id":31688,"date":"2019-09-04T13:01:16","date_gmt":"2019-09-04T17:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=31688"},"modified":"2024-07-02T17:12:17","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T17:12:17","slug":"diamond-holloman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=31688","title":{"rendered":"How Diamond Holloman finds resilience in Lumberton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Diamond Holloman, a Ph.D. candidate in Carolina\u2019s Environment, Ecology and Energy program, is the first recipient of a post-Florence disaster relief grant from the Carolina Center for Public Service. She is investigating ways that communities of color in Lumberton, North Carolina, experience and recover from natural disaster.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Diamond
Diamond Holloman<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2018, for the first time, UNC-CH Ph.D. candidate Diamond Holloman took the exit from Interstate 95 into South Lumberton. She was there to visit a local family, to hear the story of their home and the hurricanes that had struck it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMan, it couldn\u2019t get more poetic,\u201d Holloman remembers. \u201cThe grandmother is talking about the histories they have as a family in this particular house, and the struggles they\u2019ve had since (Hurricane) Matthew.\u201d<\/p>\n

A history with disasters had led Holloman to that Lumberton living room.<\/p>\n

While an undergraduate resident assistant (RA) studying environmental justice at New York University, Holloman helped her peers through Hurricane Sandy in 2012. She noticed that Sandy was causing drastically different effects on the lives of her affluent undergraduate peers versus the lower-socioeconomic Black community of Bedford-Stuyvesant, where her family lived.<\/p>\n

Wanting to know more about how natural disasters exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities, Holloman enrolled in UNC-Chapel Hill\u2019s Environment, Ecology and Energy graduate program. In her words, she studies the \u201cspaces in which the flow of water is impacted or controlled by social or political factors,\u201d or what academics refer to as \u201chydro-social dynamics.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Carolina, Holloman began to prepare a research project centered on the hydro-social dynamics of New York five years after Sandy. Then, in September 2016, Holloman saw her new home state, North Carolina, struck by a new disaster: Hurricane Matthew. Holloman immediately shifted her research focus to Matthew\u2019s impact in southeastern North Carolina.<\/p>\n

At a research conference around that time, Holloman met someone from Lumberton, one of the poorest towns hit by Matthew\u2019s winds and flooding. That new colleague invited Holloman down I-95 to her home, where Holloman later sat and spoke with three generations of women \u2014 a daughter, a mother and a granddaughter \u2014 who would tell Holloman the first personal stories she heard about Matthew\u2019s destruction.<\/p>\n

Holloman set out to find more stories from people of color in Lumberton. She crafted research questions that sought to understand how African American and Native American communities experience more vulnerabilities during natural disasters. She also wanted to explore how those same communities receive lower levels of government support \u2014 and how they find ways to endure nonetheless.<\/p>\n

This research has continued throughout the arrival and aftermath of Hurricane Florence in the fall of 2018<\/a>. Florence left Lumberton with more than $2 billion in damages. This year, a disaster relief grant from the Carolina Center for Public Service is helping fund Holloman\u2019s continuing community-engaged research and recovery work \u2014 which has brought to light effects of Matthew that reach far beyond property destruction.<\/p>\n

Natural disasters in Lumberton disproportionally impact minority businesses and, consequently, minority incomes \u2014 in addition to the health and education of minority residents. These compounding effects burden communities of color long after the flooding has receded. And yet, aid systems often neglect the clear-cut needs that community members express publicly.<\/p>\n

\u201cFolks I\u2019ve talked to, especially in the African American community, have been incredibly vocal about what they want, what they need, and planning how they can get it. I think that\u2019s a large part of what this whole project will show,\u201d Holloman reflected. \u201cPeople in these communities know what they want, can strategize how to get it. It\u2019s just a matter of resources, which I think is something that should be put more at the forefront of these recovery narratives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holloman has partnered with several community leaders in Lumberton. One of those leaders is Adrienne Kennedy, whose nonprofit, The New DEAL Initiative, empowers the community through skills-based workshops and other community-driven resources.<\/p>\n

Kennedy said she values Holloman\u2019s efforts to identify community members\u2019 stated needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving that knowledge, we\u2019ll be able to address the councils and the commissioner and say: \u2018We\u2019ve done our homework, we are put together and this is what we desire with any funds coming towards our community,\u2019\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n

In addition to her community-engaged research, Holloman has served Lumberton through fundraising, networking and even going door-to-door to distribute \u201cHelp-needed\u201d and \u201cOK\u201d signs as clear signals to search and rescue teams. Using the tool Photovoice<\/a>, Holloman also has engaged community members in gathering photos and personal stories.<\/p>\n

During her service, Holloman said she\u2019s continually inspired by the resilience she sees in South Lumberton.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople could easily get lost in the hopelessness of it all, and they don\u2019t,\u201d Holloman says. \u201cThe same community member who set up the door-to-door handout is also organizing local small businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Holloman engaged with community partners in service, she began to learn more about one of the biggest threats to the property and health of those communities: mold.<\/p>\n

Using another CCPS Disaster Relief grant, Holloman \u2014 in collaboration with UNC-CH graduate student Aleah Walsh and UNC-CH doctorate student Arbor Quist \u2014 started work this year to create a mold tool-lending library.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur work in this project is to give community members access to tools to reduce the moisture in their homes in order to alleviate some breathing problems from mold in their walls and carpet and\/or spores in the air,\u201d Holloman explained.<\/p>\n

For Holloman, research goes hand-in-hand with service.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nice to be in an environment where it\u2019s welcome for us to do this type of tool lending, and it\u2019s seen as valuable,\u201d she said. \u201cNot just for the community or for ourselves, but for academia as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Post by Eve Elliot, APPLES Summer Fellow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Diamond Holloman, a Ph.D. candidate in Carolina\u2019s Environment, Ecology and Energy program, is the first recipient of a post-Florence disaster relief grant from the Carolina Center for Public Service. She is investigating ways that communities of color in Lumberton, North Carolina, experience and recover from natural disaster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":31689,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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