In 1919, when Clayton Bates was just 12 years old, he lost his left leg in a tragic cotton-seed mill accident. His uncle made him a peg leg to help him to walk, but Bates did more than that. He taught himself how to tap dance and soon after "Peg Leg" Bates became one of the greatest tap dancers of his time.
"Don't look at me in sympathy," Bates once said. "I'm glad I'm this way. For I feel good and I'm knocking on wood, I mix light fantastic with hot gymnastics. Just watch me peg it, you can tell by the way I leg it, I'm Peg-Legged Bates, the one-legged dancing man."
You can learn more about Peg Leg Bates, who overcame insurmountable odds to become a tap-dancing legend, at Arts Mid-Hudson in Poughkeepsie, which is hosting the exhibit "Peg Leg Bates: The Performance Years" through March 9.
The exhibit is an extension of the team of Elinor Levy, folk arts program manager at Arts Mid-Hudson in Poughkeepsie, Ulster County Historian Geoffrey Miller, local musician David Winograd, ethnomusicology graduate Joseph Johnson, and Dave Davidson, the producer of Dancing Man, the 1992 documentary about Bates.
From 1951 to 1987, Bates owned and operated the Peg Leg Bates Country Club in Kerhonkson, making him the first black resort owner in Ulster County. This followed an incredibly successful tap dancing career that spanned more than 30 years and included an appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show."
"We focused largely on the resort and wanted the opportunity to highlight his life as a performer, especially as a performer where his career spanned from vaudeville to television and Jim Crow to civil rights," says Levy. "He also used his skill as a dancer in his work as a humanitarian from the largest of stages to the smallest. He loved an audience."