Civil rights activist took part in historic bus boycott

Johnnie Carr, who joined childhood friend Rosa Parks in the historic Montgomery bus boycott and succeeded the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as president of the Montgomery Improvement Assn., has died. She was 97.

Carr, who kept a busy schedule of civil rights activism up to her final days, died Friday night, Melody Ragland, Baptist Health hospital spokeswoman, said. She had been hospitalized after a stroke Feb. 11.

Carr succeeded King as president of the Montgomery Improvement Assn. in 1967, a post she still held at her death.

The Montgomery Improvement Assn. was the newly formed organization that led the boycott of city buses in the Alabama capital in 1955 after Parks, a black seamstress, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a crowded bus.

A year later the U.S. Supreme Court struck down racial segregation on public transportation.

As the improvement association’s president, Carr helped lead several initiatives to improve race relations and conditions for blacks. She was involved in a lawsuit to desegregate Montgomery schools, with her then-13-year-old son, Arlam, the named plaintiff.

She played a prominent role in 2005 on the 50th anniversary of Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat, speaking to thousands of schoolchildren who marched to the Capitol.

“Look back, but march forward,” Carr urged the huge crowd of young people.

She also traveled to memorial services in Washington, where her eulogy of Parks was “really the most dynamic” moment, recalled Julian Bond, chairman of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

“There were many people who spoke who were much better known . . . but she carried the day,” said Bond, who helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

A native of Alabama who was born in 1911, Carr met Rosa Louise McCauley, later known to the world as Rosa Parks, at Miss White’s Industrial School for Girls, a school for black children run by white women from the North.

Only days before her stroke, Carr participated in King Day ceremonies in Montgomery, speaking after a parade. Admirers marveled at her energy and commitment into her 90s.

“She was always an encourager and not a divider,” Mayor Bobby Bright told the Montgomery Advertiser. “She was just a loving person. She was truly the mother figure that we all so desperately needed in Montgomery during a very trying period of our history.”

Arlam Carr said his mother’s 97th birthday was last month, but that the only place her age showed was on paper.

“She was still driving her own car. How many 97-year-olds are still driving and you feel comfortable with their driving?” he said. “She has lived a very active life.

“If there’s one thing about it, we all know we’re going to leave here one day and this was just the time the Lord wanted her to ‘come on.’ ”

Funeral services are pending.