Johnson is Associate Professor of History and American Studies at New York University, and Professor of African American Studies at Harvard University, where his work centers on the history of slavery, white supremacy, Black resistance, US imperialism, and market capitalism. Johnson is also the Director of Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center, which is dedicated to the advancement of American historical enquiry. Soul by Soul is based on his PhD thesis in History, which he completed at Princeton University.

Johnson’s critically acclaimed publication, Soul by Soul, went to press in 1999 and subsequently received numerous awards, including the prestigious 2000 John Hope Franklin Prize, the 2000 Avery O. Craven Award, and the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians. Soul by Soul also won the 2000 Book Prize for the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and Harvard University Press’ own Thomas J. Wilson Prize.

Johnson has since written several other books on slavery in America, including Slavery’s Ghost: The Problem of Freedom in the Age of Emancipation (2011), River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (2013), and The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States (2020).