In April 1968, as slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. lay in state at Spelman's Sister's Chapel for 48 hours, it was Johnson who played the organ while 20,000 people filed past to pay their respects.
[4] Joyce Finch was born in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where she graduated from State Street High School.
[5] She entered Fisk University in 1949 where she studied piano under William Duncan Allen and music theory under John Wesley Work III.
[9][11] In 2014 she garnered the Professional Fraternity Association (PFA) Career Achievement Award from Sigma Alpha Iota.
[11] In August 2020 Johnson was presented with the Edward A. Hansen Leadership Award by the American Guild of Organists (AGO).