 After completing his Ph.D. Johnson worked as a USC Visions and Voices postdoctoral fellow in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.Johnson then spent four years as an assistant professor of communication studies at San Francisco State University before becoming the director of African American and African Diaspora Studies in the Department of Interdisciplinary, Gender, and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.His academic research examines poetry communities in Los Angeles, contrasting their democratic possibilities against the experience of struggle and privilege.