James Lee Clapp was born on July 8, 1889, in Guilford County, North Carolina. Clapp was an employee of the Oneida Cotton Mill in Graham, North Carolina. In 1920, he provided testimony in an investigation into an attempted lynching in Alamance County. Later in life, he was a farmer and an employee at a furniture manufacturing plant. Clapp died in Elon, North Carolina on October 20, 1964.