Kennedy Johnson was 15 years old when she gave birth to a baby girl in a Detroit foster home for teen moms, in February 1996. Twenty-five years later, when Johnson found herself in northern Ghana being made a queen, she couldn’t quite believe where life had led her.
In front of an adoring crowd in Tamale, the largest city in northern Ghana, Johnson was given her honorary title of “Zosimli Naa” in October 2021. It was conferred on her by the Dakpema, Abdul-Razik Salifu, a local spiritual leader, with Zosimli Naa roughly translating as “Friendship Queen” — effectively making her the Dakpema’s head of development in the area.
Thousands of miles from home, riding on a horse and dressed in traditional royal attire, Johnson would have been forgiven for thinking she was in a dream.
‘I had to abandon a lot of my childhood goals’
Johnson’s journey began as a young mother in 1990s Detroit, a time she remembers as “a bit of a challenge.” It’s an understatement. She recalled a relative dropping her off, a pregnant 15-year-old, at the foster home, and promising to pick her up when the child was born. They never returned.
“I had to abandon a lot of my childhood goals,” she said. “I just had to dig deep and find some sort of strength.”
When her daughter D’Kiya was 11, Johnson started taking her on trips abroad — first to the Bahamas, then Hong Kong, then South America. The pair fell in love with seeing the world, and Johnson began documenting her trips online “to show people that minorities can travel.”
“I would meet other people in my age group, but not my demographic,” she said. “I was going places and people would stop me and be like: ‘Beyoncé!’ They would automatically assume I was in the entertainment industry and not taking a holiday, because people of color weren’t really traveling like that.”
Years later, once D’Kiya had left home, Johnson took a DNA test that determined that she had Nigerian and Ghanaian heritage. For the first time, her travels took her to West Africa. Her arrival there — which she describes as a “return” — “felt like a huge sigh of relief,” she said.
Soon after her first journey, Johnson founded Green Book Travel in 2018, a company that organizes trips to West Africa for members of the diaspora. Named after the annual travel guide that provided Black people with information to keep them safe in Jim Crow America, Green Book Travel takes people to historically significant locations including sites of deportation in the transatlantic slave trade.
The trips immediately attracted hundreds of people, Johnson said, and her travels to West Africa became more frequent. On one trip, she found herself physically compelled — her “body was on fire” — to visit northern Ghana.
On her second day in the region, she was asked to pay a customary visit to the Dakpema and his elders in Tamale. She quickly realized that this was no ordinary meeting.
“They started consulting amongst each other,” she said, “and then they said ‘we want you to go to prepare to be the Queen.’”
Becoming royalty
Initially, Johnson did not understand the significance of the offer. But when she recounted the meeting to a village elder, he nearly crashed his car.
Four months later, with her daughter and best friend alongside her, Johnson was “enskinned” in Tamale — officially recognized as Friendship Queen — before being introduced to the community in a parade at the annual Damba festival, in which she rode on a horse to cheers from the crowd.
“It was overwhelming because the crowd was so big,” said Kendall Jones, Johnson’s best friend who was by her side at the event. “It was my first time ever experiencing having people chase your car down as you’re driving away.”
The role of Friendship Queen comes with an elevated status and practical responsibilities to the community. Johnson works together with elders of the Dagbon Kingdom, which dates back to the 14th century and comprises around five million people, to run positive initiatives in Tamale, where she now lives. So far, together with her charitable foundation Kith and Kin, she has worked to provide clean water, sanitary products, and shoes to the community, and is working on a scheme to support orphans. Locally, she is revered.
“You are put on a pedestal,” she said, “There are all the formalities — the bowing, the ‘Her Royal Majesty,’ making sure that you’re taken care of.”
From Detroit to Tamale
It’s a difficult adjustment for someone unfamiliar with celebrity. But to Johnson, the role comes naturally. “She represents peace, unity, hope and the connection of our past to the future,” said the Dakpema, who was instantly impressed by Johnson upon her first visit to his palace. “She is very popular within Dagbon and highly respected. The people admire her.”
Kennedy Johnson is not the first Zosimli Naa to be enskinned by the Dakpema. Dr Susan Herlin, an academic from Kentucky, had her title conferred in 1995 and died in 2014. Seven years later, Johnson became the next person to receive the title from the Dakpema Palace.
“We felt she was the right choice based on her qualities and her connection to both the Dagbon Kingdom and the diaspora,” said the Dakpema. “By having a Queen who embodies both our rich cultural heritage and strong ties to the world, we open the door to cultural exchange, investment and global awareness.”
In November 2024, Johnson was granted full Ghanaian citizenship. In the same month, she was also included in the Most Influential People of African Descent (MIPAD) class of 2024 top 100 futurists and innovators.
“It just unfolded to something beyond my dreams,” she said.
‘Swagger Queen’
Johnson is especially popular with the young people of Tamale, who call her “The Swagger Queen,” due to her striking fashion sense that makes full use of colorful Ghanaian fabrics.
But no one admires her more than her own daughter, now 28. “It’s the story of a person with everything against them being blessed with everything from the universe,” D’Kiya said. “You can say you’ve seen everything when you’ve seen your mom grow up with a lack of family, and then grow to gain millions of people as her family.”
As daughter of the Zosimli Naa, D’Kiya is now considered a princess. “I remember growing up and thinking, maybe one day I’ll play a Disney princess,” recalled D’Kiya, known by her rapper name Stunna Dior. “It’s still a hard thing to conceptualize.”
And what would the teenage Kennedy Johnson in Detroit think of the current Queen in Tamale? “I think she would feel inspired,” Johnson said. “If the young version met the current me, she would know to keep going and to keep pushing.”