[7] In 1990, Cannon was visiting the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe with Hammons when he was inspired to create A Gathering of the Tribes first as a literary magazine to document the vibrant culture that was happening in the Lower East Side.

[2] By 1993, Tribes quickly grew into a salon and non-profit multi-cultural interdisciplinary arts organization run from his home in the New York City borough of Manhattan's East Village neighborhood.

[9] In April 2014, both the organization and Cannon were forced to relocate and the gallery permanently shut when the occupancy agreement they had with the woman to whom the building had previously been sold, Lorraine Zhang, ended.

Simultaneously, a wall that retained some of an art-piece by David Hammons (which had previously been sold to an art collector after having been reproduced and the originality of the object transferred) was removed and relocated by the organization, being replaced by another minus the pedigree adornment.

First there was a tribute reading organized by Bob Holman and Chavisa Woods at the Bowery Poetry Club the week after his death, at which many of his contemporaries, colleagues, and admirers offered remembrances.

[13] Among those who spoke and or performed were: Katherine Arnoldi, Janine Cirincione, Patricia Spears Jones, Valery Oisteanu, Penny Arcade, Ron Kolm,  Nina Kuo, William Parker, and Daniel Carter, Cannon's sister Evelyn Cannon, his daughter Melanie Best, Nancy Mercado, Steve Dalachinsky, Mike Tyler, and Urayoán Noel, as well as Holman and Woods.