She was an active member of the Young Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and of the Equal Suffrage Association.

She served as State secretary of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association in the early 1890s.

In 1889, she published Glimpses of Sunshine, a volume of sketches and quotations on suffrage work and workers.

She was a contributor to the Cottage Hearth, the Housewife, Table Talk, the Ladies' Home Companion, the Household, the Housekeeper, the Modern Priscilla, Godey's Magazine, Home Magazine, the Decorator and Furnisher, Interior Decorator, and other journals.

She wrote mainly on domestic topics, interior decorations, suffrage and temperance subjects.

[3] For more than three years, Johnson was in charge of the woman's department of the Farmer's Voice, of Chicago, called "The Bureau for Better Halves," and afterwards conducted a like page for the Spectator, a family magazine published in Rockford.