Johnnie Carr was born Johnnie Rebecca Daniels on January 26th, 1911 in a small rural town on the outskirts of Montgomery Alabama. Johnnie Carr was the youngest of six children born to John Daniels and Annie Richmond Daniels. At the age of nine, Johnnie’s father passed away, which forced her mother to move the family from their farm to the city of Montgomery, Alabama. Her mother moved her family for better educational opportunities as her hometown only had a six month school year. Johnnie attended The Bredding School and Alice L Whites Industrial School for girls, two private schools. While attending Alice L. Whites Industrial School she met and befriended Rosa Louise McCauley, who grew up to be Rosa Parks. Before graduating high school, Johnnie married Jack Jordan in order to lessen the financial burden of her mother who was the sole provider of the family. They had two daughters and then divorced. After breaking off the marriage, Johnnie became a nurse and insurance agent. In February of 1944; she remarried a man named Arlam Carr. Johnnie Carr’s civil rights work began in 1931 when she raised money during the Scottsboro trials for the wrongly accused boys. In the 1930’s she joined her local NAACP and began working as a youth director and secretary. In 1944 along with her husband Arlam, Rosa Parks, Raymond Parks, Ed Nixon, E.G Jackson and Irene West they organized to defend Recy Taylor, a woman who was assaulted by six white men. This group continued doing activist work by canvassing neighborhoods, raising money and sending petitions to the Governor and Attorney General. Carr was a pioneer of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, she attended the mass meeting held on the day of Rosa’s trial which led to the creation of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the group that organized the bus boycott. Carr helped organize carpools for people who needed transportation. Johnnie and her husband continued to transport boycott participants even when law enforcement tried to stop them by saying that the Montgomery Improvement Association ran mass transportation without the correct licenses. In 1944 Carr sued the Montgomery County Board of Education in order to challenge segregation. Her son Arlam junior wanted to attend Sidney Lanier High School even though it only accepted white students. The Carr family received threatening phone calls and even had to move their beds away from the front of their home to avoid bomb injuries. On March 22nd 1966, Federal Judge Frank M. Johnson ruled in favor of the Carr’s. The Montgomery County School system was forced to integrate, the court also ordered for buses to reroute to serve each student so that they have full access to all services and programs. The ruling also ended segregation of faculty and had to provide remedial education programs to eliminate the effects of past discrimination. Arlam Carr Jr enrolled in Sidney Lanier High School with 12 other black students. In 1967 Carr became President of the Montgomery Improvement Association; they continued to gather money for scholarships and voter registration efforts. Carr served as President until her death at the age of 97 in 2008. The Montgomery Public School Board named a middle school in her honor, which was completed August 7th 2009; the school also has the Carr Magnet Program which is for advanced students that need more rigorous studies. She also was an active member of the United Way and a member of One Montgomery, an organization formed in 1984 to improve race relations in the city.

click here