Harding's administration worked with Georgia Republicans to reorganize the party to reduce black-and-tan influence, already declining due to the state's disenfranchisement of black voters.

According to his death notice in the New York Age, Johnson was a law partner of Bill Pledger and succeeded him in political office.

[3] Johnson's role was that of the chief dispenser of political patronage to black Republicans in the state, at a time when their ability to elect representatives of their choice was being limited by voter fraud, suppression and, in 1909, constitutional amendments and laws passed by white Democrats in the state legislature that disenfranchised most black voters.

[6] Also appointed by Taft were James Carroll Napier as Register of the Treasury, Robert Heberton Terrell as District of Columbia Municipal Judge, and William H. Lewis as Assistant United States Attorney General, making up what was known as his "Black Cabinet.

Du Bois of the NAACP, William Monroe Trotter of the National Equal Rights League, and Bishop Alexander Walters and J. Milton Waldron, prominent clergymen, all of whom opposed Booker T. Washington's politics and were disappointed at the Republican Party's tepid response to their issues.

[4] More significantly, influenced by Southern members of his cabinet, Wilson segregated federal offices, lunchrooms, and restrooms for the first time.

The NAACP and other leading black groups protested but were unsuccessful in changing these policies and many African Americans were affected, both in Washington and nationally.

This intra-party group formed to attempt to force the national Republican Party to take a firm stand against lynching, Jim Crow laws, voter disfranchisement, and other assaults upon the African-American community in the South.

The selection had not been without controversy, and Johnson had concealed his candidacy until the last minute, when he was elected by the loyal Georgia delegation over his white rival, Roscoe Pickett, 12 votes to 3, with two abstaining.

[11] But the brewing factional breach in the Republican Party of Georgia between Johnson's "black and tans," and the group of European Americans known as the "lily whites" erupted in the aftermath of the election.

[3] Harding reacted to the factional split with an attempt to reorganize the Republican Party in Georgia independently of these two feuding groups.

Johnson was ultimately induced to quit the factional battle and to exit Georgia politics through a reappointment by Harding to the choice position of Registrar of Deeds for the District of Columbia.

[14] After Johnson was appointed in June 1921 and moved again to Washington,[15] a handpicked Republican convention of 230 people, predominantly consisting of white business leaders, reorganized the Georgia party on July 26, 1921.

"[15] Watson charged that Johnson had engaged in financial shenanigans in Atlanta which made him unsuitable for government trust.

[15] After his 1921 confirmation defeat in the Senate, Johnson returned to legal practice in Washington, D.C.; his place in national politics was thereafter limited.

One of Johnson's most famous cases came in 1922, when he was called to defend a young black man charged with sexual assault of a white girl below the age of consent.

[17] Following expert cross-examination in the case, Johnson delivered what was called by one observer one of the "most eloquent and forceful" closing arguments ever heard in a District of Columbia court.

In September 1923 Johnson was one of a handful of black political leaders invited to Washington, D.C. for private consultations with President Calvin Coolidge on issues of concern to the African-American community.

[19] Henry Lincoln Johnson died on September 10, 1925, at Freedmen's Hospital after having a stroke at his home in Washington, D.C.[1] He was 55 years old at the time of his death.