For three months I lived in the heart of the ghetto. Much of what I found there I expected: bitter poverty, crime, broken families, the dark underside of life. But I also found a community determined that life should win over death, hope over despair, pride over poverty. It’s true that in the ghetto only the strong survive—and I don’t mean just physical strength. I mean the strength that is in quick wits, friendship, family, religion, love, and hard work. Those two worlds—life at its worst and life at its best—exist side by side, beginning just outside my window.Dawn in Houston’s Fifth Ward on an autumn morning. The dark sky softens, lightens, the air warms with the rising sun as the day begins to breathe.…
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