More than just a successful musician, Holland was also a dedicated humanitarian who worked all his life to promote and advance the causes of his race.  Adopting the principles that education and assimilation were the best
methods of overcoming racial barriers and prejudices, he immersed himself in the Eurocentric middle class culture of the day.

Holland left Virginia in 1834 at the age of
fourteen and headed to Boston where he
became acquainted with the guitar after hearing concerts by the Spanish guitarist
Mariano Perez.  He began studying the guitar with William Schubert, a noted composer and arranger for the instrument.  Holland also undertook the study of the flute and piano at this time, though he maintained the guitar as his primary instrument.

After returning to Oberlin in 1845, Holland married and soon moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he established himself as a teacher of guitar, mandolin, piano and flute, becoming the city's first black professional.

Although Holland seldom performed in public, he developed a national reputation as a composer and arranger for the guitar.  To the average amateur guitarist of the day, his numerous arrangements made his a household name. Of his approximately 350 published works for the guitar, which include two acclaimed methods, only about one-third are extant.

Between the years 1848 and 1854 Holland participated as an assistant secretary and member of council at National and State Negro Conventions, where he worked alongside such noted activists as Frederick Douglass.  He is known to have worked with the Underground Railroad and was secretary in charge of the "Central American Land Company", an organization which unsuccessfully attempted to purchase sufficient land in Central America to institute a free black colony.

Holland was also noted for his linguistic abilities.  He spent two years in Mexico during the early 1840s learning Spanish in an effort to master the language in which the methods of the early Spanish guitar masters such as Sor and Aguado were written.  Later on Holland became proficient at several other languages including French, Italian, and German. He used his talents as a linguist when he became a leader in the black Free Masons (Prince Hall).  Because American white Masons did not consider the Prince Hall Masons to be legitimate, Holland began corresponding with foreign Masonic Lodges seeking recognition and support.  He was instrumental in obtaining foreign recognition for blacks by Masons in Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, Peru, and the Dominican Republic and was appointed as the United States' representative of the Grand Lodges of France and Peru.  The Viennese Masonic magazine Der Freimaurer  published a biographical article about Holland in 1877.

An entire chapter was devoted to Holland in the book Music and Some Highly Musical People  by James Trotter. Trotter's book, published in 1880, represents one of the first attempts to document the lives of significant African-American musicians.  Justin Holland died at his son's home in New Orleans, Louisiana, on March 24, 1887. His son, Justin Minor Holland and daughter, Claire Monteith Holland were also accomplished guitarists, though they never developed their musical careers to the extent that their father had.  Nevertheless, Justin Minor Holland became a significant teacher and composer for the instrument.

Holland is said to have written over 35 original works.  The piece  An Andante  is one of the very few of those extant.  It is included in the book Music and Some Highly Musical People and appears to have been inspired by the work Variations on a Theme by Mozart,  op. 9, by Fernando Sor (1778-1839).