As an Alabama native and civil rights activist, Johnnie Carr was
an active participant in the Montgomery bus boycott. She
recalled hearing Martin Luther King speak for the first time at
a meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) in August 1955, and was impressed by the
‘‘flow of his words and the way that he expressed them while
just talking about ordinary things’’ (Garrow, 529). Johnnie
Rebecca Daniels, the youngest of six children, was born in 1911.
She grew up near Montgomery, Alabama, on a farm owned by her
parents, John Daniels and Anna Richmond Daniels. Carr attended
the Montgomery Industrial School for African-American girls,
where she befriended classmate Rosa Louise McCauley, later known
as Rosa Parks. In 1927, when Carr was in the seventh grade, her
school closed. Aware of her mother’s difficulties supporting the
family since her father died, she decided to get married at the
age of sixteen to Jack Jordan. After the marriage dissolved,
Carr worked and went to