The Emperor Norton Trust is a nonprofit whose mission is to honor the life and advance the legacy of Joshua Abraham Norton (1818–1880), better known as the 19th-century San Francisco eccentric, Emperor Norton.
Originally known as The Emperor's Bridge Campaign, the Trust was launched in September 2013 as a project to carry forward the call of the August 2013 Change.org petition to name the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge — long known locally simply as "the Bay Bridge" — after Emperor Norton, who set out the original vision for the bridge with three newspaper proclamations published in 1872.
Subsequently, the organization created and has followed a larger public mission that includes research and documentation; education; and advocacy concerning the full life and legacy of Emperor Norton.
The Emperor's Bridge Campaign adopted a new name, The Emperor Norton Trust, in December 2019.
Background
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.
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.
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, San Francisco Bay Guardian, KQED (Bay Area NPR affiliate), SFist, Laughing Squid, San Jose Mercury News and the Los Angeles Times, among others.
The petition remains open and currently is at nearly 6,700 signatures.
Origins and first year
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."
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. 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.
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.).
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.