She was the first woman to serve as Acting Governor General of the Bahamas, and was honored as Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.

Once the right to vote had been secured, Johnson immediately entered politics in 1961, running in the first election in which women were allowed to participate.

When the country gained its freedom from colonial rule, Johnson was appointed to the Senate and served the government until her death, a decade later.

Feeling that her employment opportunities were being blocked,[2] that same year, on 19 January 1959, Johnson asked to address the members of the Bahamian House of the Assembly,[8] but was told she could only speak after the session adjourned, to which she agreed.

[9] In her speech, she pointed out that a petition had been submitted to the House in 1958 for suffrage, which Members had claimed showed only 13 petitioners and 529 signatories.

[14] When suffrage passed in 1961, Johnson immediately entered the fray, accepting a nomination as a PLP candidate for the Eleuthera District.

[16] She lost the race, but three years later participated in a debate in the push for majority rule on the parliamentary imbalance in the Bahamas with a delegation from the PLP at the United Nations.

At that meeting, she met the president of her alma mater from Virginia Union, and agreed to accept a teaching post at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

[17] The following year, PLP had a landslide victory in the 1968 election and Johnson was reappointed to the Senate, and appointed as the first woman to lead government business.

[19] The book has been called "one of the most important accounts of the events and personalities involved in the attainment of Majority Rule and Independence in The Bahamas".

[5] The following year, when the Bahama's gained independence from Britain, Johnson resigned from her post as Minister[4] and was elected as the first female President of the Senate.

[21] In 1979, she briefly served as acting Governor General of the Bahamas, the first woman ever to do so, and that same year was honored as Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.