 During the civil rights era, he was a member of the Society of Umbra, a collective of Black writers.Cannon taught humanities at Medgar Evers College, helping to integrate the public school system in New York.In 1969 Cannon penned the novel "Groove, Bang, and Jive Around", which author Ishmael Reed called the precursor to rap and author Darius James called in the New York Press "an underground classic of such legendary stature that New York's black cognoscenti have transformed the work into an urban myth."