Herbert Johnson was born in Smithfield, N.C. and raised in Selma, N.C. He was educated at Richard B. Harrisozn High School, North Carolina Central and Howard Universities, where he received several degrees. He is the recipient of many prestigious honors and awards.

Herbert has devoted most of his life to the studies of the works and lives of African Americans. He is a researcher relentlessly pursuing truth about African American history. While in this pursuit, during the mid 1990s,Denise Fields and Herbert created the mobile museum, from Africa To Eternity. Later, Herbert created The American Museum of Slavery. A museum dedicated to enlightening the world on the many faces of slavery and how it is entangled within all our lives forever.