Cape Girardeau resident George Dordoni lived in an unfair world.

Being a child who was just obeying the laws, he didn't realize it at the time.

As a youngster growing up just outside the city limits of Miami, he had to ride in the back of the bus. He had to drink out of the water fountains reserved for blacks.

But there was a major difference between little George and the rest of the black population who couldn't go into certain restaurants or get certain jobs: Little George was white. Just not completely.

In fact, George has roots in three countries on two continents. He is part Italian, part Austrian and part Ethiopian. He is one-eighth black.

Now 52 and assistant director of international programs at Southeast Missouri State University, Dordoni remembers feeling awkward as a child when the friends he played with in his white neighborhood wouldn't speak to him in public, but he realizes he didn't experience the full oppression of a full-blooded African American.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the signing of the landmark Civil Rights Act, a law that allowed blacks to drink from the same fountains, eat at the same restaurants and work the same jobs as whites.

"I remember a certain amount of happiness dawning," Dordoni said. "There was a new age and rising expectation. We got to talk and dream about how life would be."

While it had monumental impacts nationwide, particularly in the Southern states, the law didn't have a big impact on Cape Girardeau 40 years ago.

The Southeast Missourian offered no local coverage of the issue. The Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education decision came down 10 years earlier and set the tone for racial integration in Cape Girardeau. Dr. Frank Nickell, a history professor at Southeast, said few local businesses refused to serve blacks by the time the Civil Rights Act was introduced in 1964.

As a black student at Central High School in Cape Girardeau in the late '50s, Ed Pikes witnessed the segregation shift firsthand. In 1957, blacks had to go to the back doors of some businesses to be served, he said. But in the following two years, racial mixing in public began, the 62-year-old Cape Girardeau resident said.

High school sports was a good instrument for changing racial attitudes, he said.

"You had to communicate," said Pikes, a former football player.

Pikes recalled team trips to Columbia, Mo., where Central players would all be at the same motel.

But in other parts of the state, change seemed to come more slowly.

After a 1957 game at Caruthersville, some threats were made against the racially mixed team, Pikes said. When the team stopped for a bite to eat at a roadside diner off Highway 61 near the Bootheel town, most of the black players stayed on the bus. Those who weren't aware of the threats went in to eat.

Dick Withers, who is white, was a member of the team who went in to eat.

The school had placed an order for cheeseburgers. When the waitresses began serving cheeseburgers to the team, they asked the black players to go to the kitchen to eat.

"The players just all got up and went out to the bus," Withers said. "There sure were a lot of cheeseburgers wasted that day. Nobody said a word about it. We played together, practiced together, it was just a shock that our teammates couldn't eat with us. There wasn't any furor, no anger involved. Everyone just lost their appetite."

Seven years later, the Civil Rights Act was passed.

In the ensuing four decades, black Americans have made tremendous strides. Their poverty rate has dropped by nearly half; rates of high school graduation and home ownership have soared; blacks preside over prestigious universities, major corporations, the State Department and the American Bar Association.

However, glaring gaps remain after the act, which was passed after a record two-month filibuster by embittered Southern senators.

A recent National Urban League report said black Americans' earning power is only 73 percent of whites', and their life expectancy is six years less. Predominantly black public schools are often badly underfunded, compared to mostly white schools, and black incarceration rates are higher now than in 1964.

Nationally, about 13 percent of black men, 1.4 million in all, are ineligible to vote because of criminal records.

The longest-serving black in Congress, Democrat John Conyers of Detroit, was first elected in Nov. 1964, just four months after the act became law. The next year, he helped win approval of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

"There's a lot of work still to be done," Conyers said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press.

Dordoni was connected with the black population prior to 1964 and still is. He is proud of his African heritage with several African art pieces showcased in his Southeast office.

People may not notice his African roots. But he notices others' grip on racism.

"Even today, people think it's OK to tell racial jokes," he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

bmiller@semissourian.com

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