Life

Born Frances Guion Griffis in Wolfe City, Texas

Wolfe City, Texas

Wolfe City is a city in Hunt County, Texas, United States located at the intersection of state highways 34 and 11. It is approximately seventeen miles north of Greenville in north central Hunt County, and was settled in the 1860s or 1870s when J. Pinckney Wolfe built a mill near the banks of Oyster...

 on 11 April 1900, she was raised in Greenville, Texas

Greenville, Texas

Greenville is the county seat, and the largest city, of Hunt County, Texas, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 25,557....

. She married Guy Benton Johnson

Guy Benton Johnson

Guy B. Johnson was a sociologist and social anthropologist. He was a distinguished student of black culture in the rural South and a pioneer advocate of racial equality.-Life:...

, a noted sociologist, and together they had 2 sons Guy Benton, Jr.

Benton Johnson

Benton Johnson is an American sociologist and professor emeritus of the University of Oregon's Sociology Department.-Life:Benton Johnson is the son of Guy Benton Johnson and Guion Griffis Johnson...

 and Edward. She died, aged eighty-nine, on 12 June 1989.

Academic career

She attended Baylor College for Women and began studying journalism. After marriage, she and her husband moved from Texas to take up positions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...

. There she was offered an associate professorship and earned her PhD in History.

Because so few women were active historians at the time, Johnson's first mention in the American Historical Review referred to her as "he". She published several studies of the ante-bellum South, delving into race relations, religion, freed slaves, women's life, and other aspects which had previously been only lightly treated. Her award-winning book Ante-Bellum North Carolina: A Social History is still considered an important resource.

She became heavily involved in women's organizations and issues after the end of the Second World War, when opportunities for women again became limited. She and her husband also collaborated on several research projects.