Barrington man found out he was black when his mom gave him up
As the youngest child born into an all-white family, Mark Cannon found out his real racial roots when his mother drove him to a parking lot one night and gave him away to the black father he had never met. He would never see his mom again.
"I was 3 or 4 or 5, and I got handed off in the middle of the night," Cannon remembers. "I cried and screamed and screamed and cried."
It turned out just fine.
"Life is good," says the 57-year-old Barrington businessman, who identifies himself as an African-American but often gets mistaken for Puerto Rican, Italian, Hawaiian, Samoan or whatever ethnic background other people want to see. Cannon, owner of M Cannon Roofing Co. in Schaumburg, says he is inspired to share his story after reading a column about Michael Fosberg, an actor who grew up with a white family in Waukegan and learned during a phone call at age 33 that his biological father was black.
"Mark's story and his desire to reach out to me and talk are exactly why I continue to do what I do," Fosberg emails from Washington, D.C., on the last day of Black History Month as he performs "Incognito," his one-person play about his experience. "The one thing that comes to mind about our stories is the deep pain, caused by our society's entrenched racism, that both our mothers endured in the late '50s and early '60s."
Both men were born to white moms and black dads in the suburbs of Boston. Fosberg was raised "white" by his white family in racially diverse Waukegan, and Cannon was raised "black" by his African-American father in the black neighborhood of the largely Irish suburb of Medford, Mass. Both men say they are happy with who they are and with their ability to break through any of the racial prejudices they see.
"It doesn't have to be that way," Cannon says of the way some people use race to judge others. "My father emphasized that I was black, but there was no racial animus. There was none of that."
Cannon remembers being angry at his white mother, even tearing up a letter she sent him at his high school when he was 16. "Today, as an adult, I can start to understand what she was dealing with," Cannon says. He credits his father with putting him on a better path.
George "Ziggy" Sayles had already reared a family when his illicit affair with a white co-worker resulted in him being a single father in his 40s. A high-school dropout, Sayles worked as a clothes-presser at a dry-cleaners and as a janitor in the VFW hall when he brought home his son. He earned his nickname because of the way he zigged and zagged up and down basketball courts in his youth. Cannon ended up surpassing his father's athletic ability.
As the star running back of his Malden Catholic High School football team, Cannon was named to the Parade All America Football Team and was recruited by dozens of colleges and big-time football programs across the nation. Cannon says one of the main reasons he chose the College of the Holy Cross in nearby Worcester, Mass., was so his dad could watch him play.
Cannon was recruited by Father John Brooks, a legendary Jesuit priest at Holy Cross who broke the color barrier by bringing in black students such as future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ed Jones, noted attorney Ted Wells and Wall Street financier Stan Grayson.
Having received help, guidance and inspiration throughout his career from whites and blacks, Cannon says he has learned the key is simply "to treat people like I want to be treated." He recently organized a huge gathering for his old high school football coach, who is white.
His white mother and black father are both dead now. Racism remains a problem, but the racial environment today is better for Cannon and Fosberg than it was for their parents, Cannon says.
"I know from where I came. I appreciate where I am. And I try to do what's right," Cannon says. "I'm comfortable in my skin."