The Emperor Norton Trust

In June 2013, a group of California state lawmakers introduced a resolution in the California State Assembly to name the Western crossing of the state-owned San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge — the section from Yerba Buena Island to San Francisco — for former Assembly Speaker and former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown.[1]

Several weeks later, on 1 August 2013, writer John Lumea, then living in San Francisco, wrote and published a Change.org petition calling for the entire Bay Bridge, from Oakland to San Francisco, to be named after Emperor Norton, who in 1872 — with three proclamations published in the African-American-owned abolitionist weekly The Pacific Appeal — called for a bay-spanning suspension bridge linking Oakland to San Francisco via Goat Island, the present-day Yerba Buena Island.[2]

The petition echoed an earlier, 2004 effort in which then-San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin introduced a resolution to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors calling for the Bay Bridge to be named after Emperor Norton. Ultimately, the resolution passed by the Board called for only the bridge's new Eastern crossing — the "Oakland side," then in the early planning stages — to be named after Norton. This suggestion was not well received by the Oakland City Council, and the idea went no further.

In the six weeks from the launch of the Change.org petition until the final California State Senate vote approving the resolution naming the Bay Bridge's Western crossing for Willie Brown, the petition attracted 3,800 signatures. It also received media coverage from the San Francisco Chronicle,[3][4] San Francisco Bay Guardian,[5][6] KQED (Bay Area NPR affiliate),[7] SFist,[8][9][10] Laughing Squid,[11] San Jose Mercury News[12][13] and the Los Angeles Times,[14] among others.

The petition remains open and currently is at nearly 6,700 signatures.

Encouraged by this response, Lumea set up a Facebook group on 26 August 2013 for a potential new organization that he called "The Emperor's Bridge Campaign."[15]

A launch party for the effort was held on 28 September 2013 at Emperor Norton's Boozeland, an Emperor Norton-themed bar in San Francisco.

Over the course of its first year, the Campaign continued to engage in the call to name the Bay Bridge after Emperor Norton.[16][17] The organization identified a couple of state naming practices that it used to develop a naming approach that it saw as a more politically and financially realistic than a wholesale "renaming" of the bridge. Specifically, the Campaign observed: (1) while the State of California recognizes "Willie L. Brown, Jr., Bridge" as the official name for the Bay Bridge's Western crossing, the state also — separately and independently — continues to recognize the unofficial name "San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge" for the entire bridge system. (2) There exists the precedent of state-owned bridges for which the State of California recognizes multiple names, either multiple official names or some combination of official and unofficial names.[18][19]

On this basis, the organization introduced the option of simply adding "Emperor Norton Bridge" as an honorary name for the Bay Bridge, leaving in place all existing names for the bridge and its parts (spans, tunnel, pedestrian/bike path, etc.).[20][21]

While The Emperor's Bridge Campaign remained active on the bridge-naming front, it expanded its mission to include historical research and documentation, and public education, about the full life and legacy of Emperor Norton.

Via its Web site and social media channels (Facebook and Twitter), as well as in public talks, the Campaign began to document its historical discoveries about Emperor Norton and to highlight art, music, film and other creative efforts that are inspired by him.

The Emperor's Bridge Campaign also began to produce public commemorative events to mark and celebrate various aspects of the Emperor Norton story.[22][23][24][25]

The Campaign incorporated as a nonprofit in late 2014.[26]

Since launching the organization in 2013, founder John Lumea has written and published 150 research articles on different aspects of Emperor Norton's life and legacy.[27]

Lumea's research has garnered particular attention in three areas of general interest:

July 2016 saw the debut of the Trust's digital Archive of Emperor Norton in Art, Music & Film (ARENA).[45]

The Archive's chronologically arranged Visual Arts galleries now display annotated images of 200 engravings, paintings and drawings; comics; and sculptures and fabrications of Emperor Norton dating from 1861 to the present.

In April 2017, the organization partnered with the Internet Archive to make available four dramatic films of the Emperor Norton story: three television episodes from the 1950s' and '60s and a 1936 Columbia Pictures film short that appears to be the earliest extant film portal of Norton.[46][47][48][49] The Internet Archive digitized the 1936 film from a rare 16mm copy of the film in the Trust's collection. All four films can be streamed via the websites of both organizations.

In July 2017, the organization introduced its Emperor Norton Map of the World.[50][51] This digital, interactive, annotated map now features 80 pinned sites in England, South Africa and California where Emperor Norton is documented to have lived, worked or visited. Each pin includes a description, and most images and links.

The map also includes 11 sites with Emperor-themed works of art.

In December 2019, The Emperor's Bridge Campaign adopted a new name, The Emperor Norton Trust, to better reflect its mission and its full range of activities.[52]

The name change was in anticipation of founder John Lumea's planned move to Boston, where he relocated in February 2020.

A group of seven Advisors remains in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area.

Given the Emperor Norton's Trust's broad program of activities, the organization has focused its advocacy to add "Emperor Norton Bridge" as an honorary name for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge primarily on those years that line up with significant "Nortonian" anniversaries.[53]

After its initial honorary naming push of 2013 — which coincided with John Lumea's Change.org petition of August 2013 — the organization pushed again in 2018, the bicentennial of Emperor Norton's birth, and made another, smaller push in 2019, the 160th anniversary of Joshua Norton's original Proclamation of 1859.

Most recently, the organization sought to sponsor a state legislative resolution that would take effect in 2022, the 150th anniversary of Emperor Norton's proclamations of 1872 setting out the original vision for the bridge. The legislature did not take up the issue in its 2022 session.

The Trust currently has suspended its bridge-naming effort.

In October 2022, The Emperor Norton Trust announced a new effort to have the San Francisco Ferry Building clock tower named "The Emperor Norton Tower" in 2023 — the 125th anniversary of the opening of the building in 1898.[54]

• Official website