Hello.
On the morning of 17 September 1859, Joshua Abraham Norton made his way to 517 Clay Street, San Francisco; walked up to the 2nd-floor editorial offices of the Daily Evening Bulletin; and handed the editor, George Fitch, a piece of paper with a Proclamation declaring himself Emperor of the United States.
Fitch printed it in that evening's edition.
Exactly 156 years later, in 2015, The Emperor Norton Trust — then known as The Emperor's Bridge Campaign — inaugurated a new annual holiday to mark the anniversary of this momentous occasion.
We called it Empire Day.
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With the United States in the throes of a national conversation about what it means to speak and act as though black lives truly matter, this upcoming Empire Day affords an important opportunity to consider what that meant for Emperor Norton and how that might have shaped his idea of empire.
Join Emperor Norton Trust founder John Lumea for:
EMPEROR NORTON IN BLACK SAN FRANCISCO
Empire Day Notes on SF's Monarch of the Marginalized
Thursday 17 September 2020
12 Noon – 1 p.m. PDT
A free Zoom discussion of the Emperor's relationships with leading black intellectuals and editors of his day — including Peter Anderson, whose abolitionist weekly The Pacific Appeal between 1870 and 1875 published the lion's share of Emperor Norton's proclamations — as well as the Emperor's well-documented insistence on equality, civil rights and expanded legal protections for black people.
This event is co-hosted by The Mechanics’ Institute.
You can register and get a Zoom link via the Trust's blog announcement linked here.
Please share widely!
Hope to "see" you next Thursday!
Cheers!
JOHN LUMEA
The Emperor Norton Trust