Clayton Bates
Clayton Bates was born in 1907, in Fountain Inn, South Carolina. As a young boy, he worked in the cotton fields and his mother was a nurse for a white family. Clayton hated his job though, and his true love was dancing. Some days, he would secretly go to the local barber shop and dance for the rich white men for some extra money, until one day when his mother found out and dragged him home. Clayton always went back though, because he loved the extra money, and most of all, he loved to dance. At the age of eleven, Clayton got sick of his job in the cotton fields. He claimed that the job "wasn't 9 to 5, it was can to cant". He pleaded with his mother to let him go to work in the cottonseed mill, but she wouldn't let him because she felt he was too young to be working in a dangerous factory. After enough reasoning his mother agreed to let him go to work in the cottonseed mill, where he worked on top of a cottonseed pile. His job was to push the cottonseed so that it flowed down into the conveyor, where it was ground into meal. On only his second day at the job, Clayton slipped and fell into the conveyor with the cottonseed and fell into the auger, which crushed his leg and 2 fingers on his
These moves weren't always easy for "Peg Leg" though, there were times when he would be found sitting in his dressing room literally crying from the pain his moves caused him. Or Bates' infamous move, "Jet Plane", in which he would run and leap into the air and then land on his peg leg and continue to hop on it while the orchestra accented each hop, with a loud blast of music. In 1938, "Peg Leg" headlined a performance at the infamous Cotton Club. Since, black people were not allowed into most hospitals at the time, Bates was forced to have his leg amputated on his mother's kitchen table. More often he would talk to children about never giving up, no matter what life throws their way. For close to forty years Bates performed at his country club, greeting guests at the door before each show. Bates' tap dancing style was so unique he was also invited to dance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" 22 times, where he would perform "challenge dances" with another tap dancer. Clayton refused to let this slow him down, and with a wooden peg leg his uncle made for him, he ran five miles every day, jumping over ditches and whatever obstacles he met. "Peg Leg" began joining traveling dance shows. She didn't even recognize him because his peg leg had grown to be a part of him, just like his arm or face. Although Clayton is no longer fit to perform, he continues to inspire dancers and fans of his, and can still be heard saying his standard closing at the end of each performance, "You have made a certain one-legged dancer very very happy. "Peg Leg" would do novelty moves any dancer with two legs couldn't do. During a performance in Harlem, New York, Bates was asked by Lew Leslie to appear in a broadway show called "Blackbirds of 1928". He would do such moves as a five foot leap into the air with a turn.
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Acceptance Essays
