Activist, friend of Parks dies

MONTGOMERY, Ala. --- Johnnie Carr, who joined childhood friend Rosa Parks in the historic Montgomery bus boycott and became a prominent civil rights activist over the past half century, has died. She was 97.

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Associated Press

Johnnie Carr, called "one of the three major icons of the civil rights movement," worked for decades on the cause.

Baptist Health hospital spokeswoman Melody Ragland said Ms. Carr died Friday night. She had been hospitalized after suffering a stroke Feb. 11.

"She hadn't been sick up until she had the stroke. It was such a massive stroke that she never was able to recover from it," her son, Arlam Carr, said Saturday. "She was still very active -- going around and speaking -- but it was just one of those things."

Ms. Carr succeeded the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association in 1967, a post she held at her death. It was that group that led the boycott of city buses in the Alabama capital in 1955 after Ms. Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to whites on a crowded bus. A year later, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down racial segregation on public transportation.

"Johnnie Carr is one of the three major icons of the civil rights movement: Dr. King, Rosa Parks and Johnnie Carr," said Morris Dees, a co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center. "I think ultimately, when the final history books are written, she'll be one of the few people remembered for that terrific movement."

As president of the Montgomery Improvement Association the past four decades, Ms. Carr had been a leader in numerous initiatives to improve race relations and conditions for black people. She was involved in a suit to desegregate Montgomery schools, with her son, then 13, the named plaintiff.