Dr. Johnson is an Associate Professor of Language and Literacy for Linguistic and Racial Justice in the Department of English at Michigan State University. He is an award-winning, published scholar and author on racial justice, equity, and education. He was the recipient of the 2017 Promising Researcher Award and the recipient of the 2018 Edwin M. Hopkins Award all through the National Council of Teachers of English. His co-edited book edited with Drs. Gloria Boutte, Gwenda Greene, and Dywanna Smith, African Diaspora Literacy: The Heart of Transformation in K-12 Schools and Teacher Education, is published with Lexington Books and received the 2019 Critics’ Choice Book Award for the American Educational Studies Association. Dr. Johnson’s most recent book, Critical Race English Education, New Visions, New Possibilities, is a love letter to Blackness, Black people, and Black culture. Dr. Johnson is centrally concerned with equipping youth, post-secondary students, faculty and staff, and communities to embrace a radical imagination through (re)imagining the world not as it currently is but what it has the potential to become.

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Dr. Johnson is currently living in Los Angeles, CA. In the current moment and immediate future, he has begun to develop documentaries, docuseries, short films, and pilot scripts that illuminate the diversity in Blackness, Black stories, masculinity, and sexuality. Dr. Johnson believes his current and future film projects will have a broad appeal and provide positive and affirming messages about Black people and culture.