HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK\/CNN NEWSOURCE) – A 94-year-old Houston great-grandfather is hoping to get what he says is a missing part of his identity: A birth certificate.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was born on Ellerbe Plantation…Shreveport, Louisiana.\u201d<\/p>\n
August 14, 1931, is the birth date of James Dorsey.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as you could go on the plantation,\u201d Dorsey said. \u201cThat\u2019s where I was living at.\u201d<\/p>\n
Life for Blacks, Dorsey said, meant living on the plantation — even after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863.<\/p>\n
While slavery was outlawed, manual labor and its grueling conditions were the only option, even as a child.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandfather used to take me out in the field with them,\u201d said Dorsey. \u201cAnd uh, they have me on one side of the road and picking cotton, couldn\u2019t pick too much, you know, because I was giving to them. They putting it in the sack.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dorsey said he would soon learn as an adult that he faced another challenge: proving who he was.<\/p>\n
Because of routine practices on plantations, he was born to a midwife. Also common, he said, was that his birth was never recorded.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to the courthouse. I went to the school board. They was over everything, all the schools and plantation, what the school was on, they was over everything,\u201d Dorsey said.<\/p>\n
He moved to Houston in 1956. Over the years, he had been able to get a Social Security card and driver\u2019s license, but not a birth certificate.<\/p>\n
Now at 94 years old, he has one wish: \u201cOh Lord. I don\u2019t know. A lot of go crazy (laugh). That sure would be something because I missed out on so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
ABC13 reached out to the Louisiana Department of Health.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson directed them to the state\u2019s vital records department to submit an application and follow the process.<\/p>\n
At Dorsey\u2019s home and with the help of his daughter, line by line, the application was filled out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI pray that they get his birth certificate for him because he really needed it and he\u2019s been wanting to get it, but he didn\u2019t know how,\u201d said Barbara Dorsey Curry, his daughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat does a birth certificate mean for me? I couldn\u2019t even pronounce what it would mean,\u201d Dorsey said.<\/p>\n
That piece of paper represents history and a dream they hope becomes a reality.<\/p>\n
There is no timeline for how long the application review will take.<\/p>\n
Louisiana officials said they would help connect the family with someone to help in the process once the application was submitted.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KTRK via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK\/CNN NEWSOURCE) – A 94-year-old Houston great-grandfather is hoping to get what he says is a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":884213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5130],"tags":[194728,356841,4345,6607,353,150663,71827,358,3187],"class_list":["post-884337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-birth-certificate","tag-emancipation","tag-houston","tag-juneteenth","tag-louisiana","tag-shreveport","tag-slavery","tag-texas","tag-tx"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116792470151744540","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}