IT’S CLEAR from a survey of the Proclamations and other actions of Emperor Norton that one of the Emperor’s most abiding concerns during his reign, 1859–1880, was the unjust treatment of the Chinese. For a period of more than a decade, focused during the second half of his reign, the Emperor flagged his opposition to discrimination against the Chinese in the courts, the workplace and society — and to the physical violence that self-empowered demagogues and thugs on the West Coast meted out on Chinese during the 1860s and ‘70s.

Here, as a resource, are the published Proclamations of Emperor Norton on the Chinese that we’ve discovered so far — as they originally appeared in the papers of the Emperor’s time. There are 17 Proclamations — plus a reference to an eighteenth.

Almost certainly, this is not an exhaustive list. Many, many issues of newspapers from this period are lost. And, even for the many scanned issues that are included in the current digital databases, the limitations of optical character recognition (OCR) technology mean that even searches on obvious terms like “Norton,” “Emperor,” “Chinese” and “China” don’t produce every possible result.

We’ll continue to add to this list as new information comes to light.

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1868

1870

1871

The following Apology published on the front page of the Pacific Appeal newspaper on 27 May 1871 refers to an earlier Proclamation of Emperor Norton. It appears that the issue of the Appeal that included the Proclamation is lost.

Emperor Norton issued the following Proclamation in response to a race riot and lynching in Los Angeles, in which 15 Chinese men were rounded up and hung by a white mob on the evening of 24 October 1871.

1872

In the second of two Proclamations Emperor Norton issued on 5 January 1872, he kept up the pressure on punishments for those implicated in the anti-Chinese atrocities committed in Los Angeles on 24 October 1871.

1873

What follows are two versions, published two days apart — the first in Oakland; the second in San Francisco — of what substantially is the same Proclamation. The only difference is in how the editors and typesetters of the two papers translated Emperor Norton’s handwriting into print.

The Oakland Daily News appears to have understood, as The Pacific Appeal did not, that the opening phrase “Our Treaties with China,” was intended as a headline — separate from the body of the Proclamation.

Meanwhile, the Appeal — which by mid 1873 had been transcribing Emperor Norton’s manuscripts for two-and-a-half years — appears to have chosen correctly in rendering the Emperor’s opening phrase as “total destruction” rather than the News’s “that destruction.”

1874

1875

1876

Following are two publications of the same Proclamation in April 1876:

Emperor Norton issued the following Proclamation in the wake of an incident in which white citizens in Antioch, Calif., banished and drove out the town’s Chinese population then burned down the vacated Chinatown. A good summary of this history is here.

The writer notes that Emperor Norton was “[t]he only prominent voice against the Antioch violence” but then feels the need to attach an asterisk to the Emperor’s response by writing “although his grievance was also colored by economic concerns.” This editorial aside seems to betray the writer’s failure to engage with, and to understand, the Emperor’s larger program on the Chinese.

1878

The “sand-lot meetings” that Emperor Norton targets in at least two Proclamations that he issued in 1878 are the weekly anti-Chinese rallies that Denis Kearney held across from San Francisco City Hall.

On 28 April 1878 — two-and-a-half weeks after the following Proclamation was published — the Emperor would appear at one of these rallies and confront Kearney personally.

**Proclamation of Emperor Norton, *Sacramento Daily Record–Union*, 10 April 1878**, p.4. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection

At the end of the year, Emperor Norton issued the following “twofer” that opens with a Proclamation that takes a public-nuisance tack against the sand-lot meetings and calls on the police to intervene — then closes with what can be seen as a separate Proclamation insisting on fair wages for sailors.

The Emperor bridges the two with a riff on the Golden Rule — which can be seen as the basis for both Proclamations.

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ANOTHER CONTENDER for this list is included in Allen Stanley Lane’s 1939 biography, Emperor Norton: The Mad Monarch of America. Unfortunately, Lane doesn’t provide a citation for the Proclamation. And, here at The Emperor Norton Trust, we’ve been unable to authenticate the Proclamation independently with a newspaper, date and image of the original. So, we regard it as being undocumented and present it here with an asterisk.

Having said that, the Proclamation is consistent with Emperor Norton's literary approach and with his style and quality of writing. And, on substance, the Proclamation reflects specific concerns that the Emperor addressed in Proclamations that are documented above. So, it seems more likely than not that this one is from the Emp’s pen.

The apparent style anomalies in the Proclamation — case, italics, etc. — are as rendered by Lane.

Possibly late 1869

Lane references the February 1868 Proclamation listed above, in which Emperor Norton commands that the U.S. Supreme Court “order the evidence of Chinese to be taken the same as any other nation, in all our Courts of law and justice.” Lane then goes on to say that, after “[a] year and a half,” the Emperor “published an edict with more teeth in it:

WHEREAS, we, Norton I, Dei Gratia, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, issued a Decree, commanding the United States Supreme Court to issue a peremptory mandamus, ordering all the Courts of Law and Justice within their jurisdiction to admit Chinese evidence, the same as that of any other Foreign Nation;

WHEREAS, we have not yet been officially informed that said order has been complied; and

WHEREAS, our commercial relations and Treaty with that gigantic Nation is endangered by refusing this act of Justice and right;

Now, therefore, we do hereby decree Chinese evidence admissable to prevent difficulty, and order the Supreme Court dissolved, if they fail to consent to this, our Imperial decree.

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Emperor Norton's Proclamations on the Chinese, 1868–1878

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