“You Are as Good as Anybody”
The fires that burned in her town became a lesson in self-worth for resiliency expert DeVetta Holman-Copeland, who turned a conversation at the family dinner table into a career helping others.
The college linebacker sat across from me in his letter jacket and told me about the times he had tried to take his life, beginning in high school. We were at a small table in a packed coffee shop on an overcast afternoon on February 12, 2020.
We were talking about depression, and how it steals your memory.
We were talking about young people, and how they were suffering in large numbers from anxiety—especially his fellow students of color.
We were talking about his plans to move to Los Angeles that summer to become a screenwriter, how he knew he’d be taking his depression with him—and how recognizing that fact was part of his journey.
We were talking about resilience.
And all of this was one month before time folded in on itself in the haze of the pandemic. All of this was before George Floyd. All of this carried forward, demanding deeper reserves of strength in an era marked by disconnection and a deplorable hate.
But all of this wasn’t new, not to DeVetta Holman-Copeland.
In an office about a mile away, she had been talking about community and resilience with students like that football player for years. She had been talking about those themes, thinking about them, centering them, since the night in 1970 when she woke as a child to find her small town ablaze.
Holman-Copeland—Dr. D., as she is known to students—is the resiliency and student success coordinator at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Office of Student Wellness. As I was researching a story about campus mental health four years ago, Holman-Copeland spent a great deal of time on the phone with me, helping me get to the heart of what young people were facing, and what the country was facing, as we lurched from crisis to crisis that year.
When we finally met in person last month, Holman-Copeland had just said goodbye to the class she had ushered through those years of upheaval that began in 2020. I asked her to share how her life experiences had informed her work with those students and what she would tell the families and young adults facing an uncertain future now.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Where does community start for you? Where did you learn its meaning?
It started at the dinner table growing up. It was unheard of that we didn’t sit together at 6 o’clock as a family. No TVs on. We had conversations, and they were not even about what we did in school. It was about what happened during the day. [The adults] wanted to know what you were feeling, and we wanted to know what they did. We listened to what the grown-ups did and were pulled into that conversation. Those were the best life lessons because I always liked to listen to grown people talk.
How do you use those lessons in your work with college students today?
When students are referred to me, they often start talking about what’s happened on campus, who they saw, what happened over here at the library, etc. And they will do that over multiple conversations. Only after that will they start talking about what they need help with. It has to be a relationship. You have to be a very good listener, and that’s one of my gifts. I learned that skill by listening to Mama and Daddy and Grandmama and trying to make sense of what they were saying—and by asking questions. I was the question-asker at the dinner table. And they didn’t say, “You shouldn’t ask.” They would try to explain it.
What was the most significant conversation you had at the dinner table, or the most impactful?
One thing in particular that really bothered me was a big fire that happened in our community, and it was because of a racial incident. I woke up one morning about two, and the room was orange. This is the dead of night. I said, “Why is the room so bright?”
I jumped up and ran upstairs to Mommy and Daddy's room: “Daddy! Daddy!” He was already up. He said, “Go back to bed, Baby.” Took me by the hand. He told my mother something, and then he took me by the hand, put me back in bed.
Outside, our town was on fire. It was a very turbulent time.
[Ed. note: In May 1970, in still-segregated Oxford, N.C., Henry “Dickie” Marrow Jr., a 23-year-old Black man, was beaten, shot, and killed by three white men who claimed Marrow had spoken inappropriately to a white woman at their restaurant. Several downtown businesses were firebombed in protest after Marrow’s murder.
[An all-white jury acquitted the men of Marrow’s killing; an 18-month boycott of white-owned businesses and a march on the state capital followed—organized by Oxford native and future NAACP leader Ben Chavis. The events led the town to integrate six years after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historian Tim Tyson, a child in Oxford at the time, chronicled Marrow’s killing and its impact in the 2004 book Blood Done Sign My Name.
[Holman-Copeland continued:]
The most pivotal moment in my life—because I can still see that orange room—was being at the dinner table and hearing Daddy talk to his mother and my mother about what happened. Our family knew the young man who had been killed—we weren't really close to him, but you knew of him because in Oxford, everybody knows everybody. And just hearing them talk around the table about that and civil rights and what is the next step, and being a community, and: At least they didn't burn any of our churches down. And: Are we going to church on Sunday?
And then, looking at the grown-ups as they told us, “You are as good as anybody.” I carried that with me to UNC as a student. I carried that with me when my guidance counselor told me there was no need to apply to college, even though I had straight-As.
In fact, you earned a full scholarship to UNC, where you received two of your three degrees.1
Yes, I did. I always knew I was going to college. Integration had started, and I had made some really, really good friends who didn’t look like me. They were going to UNC and East Carolina and N.C. State. So I considered those places, too. I had never stepped foot on UNC’s campus, never ever, until I got here to go to school. And then the real world opened up to me. Then you really started seeing differences.
What did you learn about resilience from that experience?
The way parents help their students navigate nowadays, Beth—do this, do that, go this route—I didn’t have that. I had to figure it out by myself. And that is part of grooming a student. My mother probably didn’t know any better; if she thought she could have had an impact, she probably would have. But my mother thought, Once I turn her over to UNC, they're going to take care of her. Not knowing that UNC is a behemoth. And it’s a beautiful entity, but there’s another whole life dynamic on this campus that I didn’t even realize I was navigating back then.
Now that I’m on the other end of that, I see students coming in, and the resiliency—their ability to navigate the turbulence—is different. The turbulence you had to navigate when I was a student, when there were no social media influencers and no one telling you every step of the way what to do—all those things were the minor obstacles that prepared you for the big life challenges ahead. When you don’t have those little divots to deal with before you leave home, and you are already insulated, if you have setbacks or doubts when you arrive on campus, you don't know what to do with them. And we have a very anxious generation. Many do not come to college with the tools for resiliency.
Build a community that's going up. Surround yourself with people who are going upward because your community will define who you become.
What are the critical factors at home that help young adults navigate life on their own?
The key is really structure and foundation. I know I had that. And you knew the love was there because of the way you are looking at me right now: Because we were listened to with full attention and included in conversations. Because of the way we were taken by the hand and taught to do something, standing right there beside us until we finished. Because of the way the grown-ups said, “You can do hard things.” College students and young adults need to believe that.
So many unknowns are on the horizon as families prepare to send their children to college this fall, from a pivotal presidential election to DEI offices coming under threat at campuses nationwide—including UNC’s. What are some constants that students can trust?
We don’t know what will happen. However, I learned from Dean (Hayden) Renwick, the dean for all Black students when I came to UNC in the 1970s, a lesson that remains true: Build your community. Build a community that's going up. Surround yourself with people who are going upward because your community will define who you become.
I tell students: You came here to successfully navigate college. Nobody let you in here because of any kind of affirmative action or because they felt sorry for you. You got in here because there's a rubric. There are qualifications that you have to meet. You got in here because you met them. But you will not stay here because of that. You have got to exercise every iota of what you have within you to come out the other side. ♣
NEXT WEEK: The mother-daughter team behind a beloved restaurant shares the recipe for blending business, community, and family.
Holman-Copeland earned an undergraduate degree and a master’s in public health from UNC-Chapel Hill. She has a PhD from N.C. A&T State.