Peg Leg Bates

Bates was a one-legged tap dancer who became an unlikely but highly popular star of vaudeville shows and night-clubs, stage musicals, and film and television productions in a career that stretched from the 1920s to the late 1980s. Born in Fountain Hill, South Carolina, USA, 10/11/1907, Bates started tap-dancing for pennies at the age of five, but his venture seemed doomed when, seven years later, he lost his leg in an accident at the cotton gin mill where he worked. In the 1960s, Bates opened a resort, the Peg Leg Bates Country Club, in the Catskills, New York. The resort catered to a black clientele, a novelty in an area that was primarily for white, Jewish holidaymakers. He Died 12/6/1998.