The Emperor Norton Trust

TO HONOR THE LIFE + ADVANCE THE LEGACY OF JOSHUA ABRAHAM NORTON

RESEARCH • EDUCATION • ADVOCACY

Filtering by Tag: Oakland Daily News

Emperor Norton, A Metaphor in His Own Time

Surely, one sign that a person has achieved the level of “cultural saturation” that we sometimes call “fame” is when when independent sources start using that person’s name as a shorthand to characterize other people.

Here are four stories of people not Emperor Norton who — during Emperor Norton’s lifetime — were labelled in the California press as various kinds of "Emperor Norton":

  • an “Epistolary Emperor Norton” in 1867;

  • “the Emperor Norton of the News” in 1869;

  • "the Emperor Norton of the California press" in 1873; and

  • the “Healdsburg Emperor Norton” in 1878.

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Emperor Norton Abolished the Democratic and Republican Parties — Twice

Students of Emperor Norton are familiar with his August 1869 Proclamation to “abolish and dissolve the Democratic and Republican parties.”

The Emperor Norton Trust has uncovered a previously unreported second Proclamation, from September 1876, in which the Emperor commands “the dissolution of the Republican and Democratic parties” — although for different reasons than he gave in 1869.

This second Proclamation further reinforces Emperor Norton’s longstanding antipathy to the major parties and to the U.S. party system — a posture which led Joshua Norton to declare himself an “independent candidate” for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1858 and to deliver a brief speech at a public “No Party” forum in 1875.

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