found: African American National Biography, accessed April 25, 2015, via Oxford African American Studies Center database:(Bates, Peg Leg; Clayton Bate; dancer; born 11 Oct. 1907 in Fountain Inn, South Carolina, United States; at age twelve, while working in a cotton-seed gin mill, he caught and mangled his left leg in a conveyor belt; the leg was amputated on the kitchen table at his home; he resolved to continue dancing and worked his way from minstrel shows and carnivals to the vaudeville circuits; after dancing in the Paris version of Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1928, he returned to New York to perform as a featured tap dancer at such famous Harlem nightclubs as the Cotton Club, Connie's Inn, and Club Zanzibar; sang and danced the role of the swashbuckling pirate Long John Silver in the musical review Blackouts (1949); first television appearance (1948) on This Is Show Business; invested his earnings and, with his wife, Alice, purchased a large turkey farm in New York's Catskill Mountains and converted it into a resort (1951); the Peg Leg Country Club, in Kerhonkson, New York, flourished as the largest resort in the country that was owned and operated by a black person; continued to perform and teach (1989); was master of ceremonies at the National Tap Dance Day celebration in Albany, New York (1992); received a Distinguished Leadership in the Arts award; was honored with the Flo-Bert Award by the New York Committee to Celebrate National Tap Dance Day (1991); died 8 Dec. 1998 in Fountain Inn, South Carolina, United States)
