CORRECTION 8/19/21: A previous version of this story misidentified Johnson as the actor who played the bank robber in the film “Dirty Harry.” While he was in the film, he had another role, identified in the corrected text. The bank robber was played by the late actor Albert Popwell. Johnson would’ve turned 90 on Nov. 11. And while he lived in Oregon, it was not in a commune. Services, survivors and other information should appear in a standard obituary yet to be published. The Tribune-Herald regrets the errors.
Raymond Johnson, an actor, poet and one of downtown Hilo’s most iconic individuals, died Monday. He was 89.
A fixture at local stage plays, concerts and art show openings, Johnson was a tall, bearded, striking man whose manner of dress included bright colors, beads, bangles and jaunty headwear — and in later years, a walking stick. He walked downtown almost daily, chatting amiably with everyone.
“I usually saw him on his walk by the Hilo Post Office on a Friday afternoon during our weekly peace vigil,” said activist Jim Albertini on Facebook. “We would always share aloha and usually Ray would pass on some social insight for justice, peace and the Earth.”
Born in New York City in 1931, Johnson partook of the vibrant arts and jazz scene in Harlem before a hitch in the military in the 1950s, according to his friend, Ken Charon, an artist who drew Johnson in pencil and graphite.
His poem, “Walking East on 125th Street,” was included in the 1968 book “Black Fire: an Anthology of Afro-American Writing,” a seminal work in the Black Arts Movement.
After moving to San Francisco just in time for the Summer of Love and later to Oregon, Johnson came to Hilo in 1983.
Johnson logged more than a dozen movie and TV credits before moving to Hilo, including the Clint Eastwood movie, “Dirty Harry,” in which he played a man hired to beat up a gangster.
He also had a three-year run in a San Francisco production of the stage play “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
Locally, he played Bynum Walker, a “conjure man,” in the University of Hawaii at Hilo Performing Arts Center’s 2012 production of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”
The role of a juju healer fit Johnson to a tee.
“I always felt he was mystical and magical and humble all at the same time,” Haki Peace Montano posted on Facebook.
Services are pending.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.