HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Decades after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, the effects of slavery are still felt today. For a Houston great-grandfather, he's hoping to get what he says is a missing part of his identity: a birth certificate. "I was born on Ellerbe Plantation. Shreveport, Louisiana," James Dorsey said. "As far as you could go on the plantation. That's where I was living at." Born on Aug. 14, 1931, Dorsey says life for Blacks at the time meant living on a plantation.