many houses were boarded-up. Many area businesses were vacant and the area had many vacant lots with overgrown plants. In 1974 Whit described the neighborhood as "one of Houston's poorest ghettos". In the 1970s and 1980s the Fifth Ward became notorious throughout Houston for the violence perpetrated in the community. Ernest McMillan, a community activist and contributor to the Fifth Ward Enrichment Program, said in a 1987 Houston Chronicle article that "One of the differences between this neighborhood and one like River Oaks is that they have lots of support and all kinds of resources available. Here in the Fifth Ward it's the exact opposite: These people have no resources at all. There's one clinic, one library, no YMCA, very few activities, and the community is very fragmented. It's not the kind of environment that helps a child excel." As of 1979 the median income in the Fifth Ward was $5,030 ($ adjusted for inflation), 25% of Fifth Ward residents had high school diplomas, and 34% of Fifth Ward residents lived below the poverty line. The respective citywide averages were a median income of $9,876 ($ adjusted for inflation), a percentage of those with high school diplomas of 52%, and a poverty line percentage of 10%. By 1979 only a few Italian American families remained in the Fifth Ward. By that year, black flight from the Fifth Ward to Kashmere Gardens, South Park, Sunnyside, and Trinity Gardens had occurred. West wrote in 1979 that about 90% of the Fifth Ward was characterized by "physical ugliness" and "poverty" while there are some middle class "pockets of affluence" that do not have physical indications of troubled neighborhoods. At the time the Fifth Ward was more dense in terms of population than most Houston neighborhoods. The average Fifth Ward housing density was 9.14 and there were 30.5 persons per residential acre, while Houston's citywide average density and persons per residential acre were 4.98 and 14.4, respectively. In addition, 21% of city blocks had no drainage systems, while 39% had open ditches and 40% had storm sewers. West stated that the Fifth Ward's physical character was not like that of Harlem in New York City or Roxbury in Boston. In 1974 Whit Canning of Texas Monthly stated that the Fifth Ward was characterized by a "project-type apartment complex", "narrow streets" and "small stores". West wrote that the Fifth Ward had its environment "out in