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For nearly three decades, comedian Tommy Davidson has been cracking up audiences with his stand-up routine, quirky one-of-a-kind characters and spot-on impressions of celebrities like Sammy Davis Jr. and Michael Jackson. In 1990, Davidson shot to fame when he was cast on the hit sketch comedy show “In Living Color.”

After that, Tommy was seen in movies, doing voice overs for cartoons and headlining in comedy specials all over the country. But it’s hard to imagine that someone who’s star is so bright, started life with such a dark time.

On 2015’s “Oprah: Where Are They Now?”, Davidson opens up about his childhood and how he was literally thrown away by his birth mother. Tommy’s birth mother literally threw him behind a garbage can and left him there. His adoptive mother said that she had a feeling to look behind the public trash can in the alley saw Tommy’s leg. From there she took him to the hospital where they didn’t know if he would even live or die.

“I was damaged pretty bad. I had contusions in my skull, was scarred. The doctors didn’t even know if I was going to live,” said Davidson.

Although he was adopted, the majority of African American children are left behind. Moreover, a baby who is not African-American is seven times more desirable to potential adoptive parents than a black baby. Surprisingly Latino and white children fared about the same.

All of this translates into dollars in America’s $2-3 billion adoption market: In a recent study, parents were willing to pay $16,000 more for a girl than a boy, but $38,000 more for a non-African-American baby than a black one.

Following his adoption by a white family in 1966, Davidson moved from Colorado to Wyoming to Oregon until he was about 5 years old. After bouncing from state to state, his family made the move to the East Coast to…

Comedian Tommy Davidson: From Thrown Out & Left For Dead To Being Adopted  was originally published on blackdoctor.org

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