Post-Grad School

Johnson attending Howard University, a historically Black research university, for law school was actually a fluke. Criminal defense wasn’t an interest to her. In fact, she just wanted to attend because she loved school, and getting a law degree seemed like the common sense choice after earning a journalism degree.

Johnson said her love for learning has roots in her high school years when she participated in a program called Upward Bound and stayed on a college campus for six weeks.

“I love the scholarship. I love research. I loved writing,” Johnson said.

Johnson could have stayed in Iowa for law school, but she had read that people tend to live in the city where they choose to attend law school. At the time, Johnson couldn’t see herself practicing law in Iowa because she didn’t see Iowa City needing attorneys.

“I just thought Iowa City was magical, and they couldn’t possibly have a need for attorneys because it’s just all students going to school all the time,” Johnson said she thought when she was 21 years old. “ I didn’t have the forward-thinking to think that Iowa certainly needs attorneys.”

However, Johnson didn’t just choose Howard University because she thought Washington D.C. was filled with lawyers. She also knew that there were many notable African Americans who graduated from Howard, such as Thurgood Marshall, a former associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Vernon Jordan, a business executive and civil rights attorney.

Johnson initially thought she would use her law degree to become an academician and teach. But after graduating from Howard, Johnson went a different direction.

After her graduation, a law firm in Portland, Oregon recruited her when she was at Howard. But a year later, Johnson returned to D.C. and enrolled in Georgetown’s Master of Laws program, which would take a year to complete and focused on specialized legal education.

But even after advancing her education in law and passing the D.C. Bar Exam, Johnson wouldn’t spend her career in court or at a law firm.