At 95, great-great-grandmother Johnnie Carr is a walking history book.

She sometimes can't remember what she had for breakfast, but ask her to reflect on life in Montgomery, Ala., 51 winters ago, and memories spill forth.

Mrs. Carr sold insurance in the small Southern capital in December 1955 when her good friend, a quiet seamstress named Rosa Parks, got on a segregated bus and refused to give up her seat for a white passenger.

Mrs. Parks' defiance was unplanned, but courageous. It sparked the 382-day Montgomery bus boycott and launched the modern civil rights movement, for which Mrs. Carr, a mother of three, had a front-row seat.

Because Mrs. Carr, and her husband, Arlam, worked for a black-owned firm, they didn't fear losing their jobs for being active in seeking social change. So, they plunged in, picking up workers who needed rides and attending organizing sessions in local churches.

"It was a rough time," said Mrs. Carr, who shared her memories with about 100 people yesterday morning as part of PNC Bank's Black History Month Speakers Series. "We had nothing to lose. Everything, everything in our community was segregated."

It was in Montgomery, at Mrs. White's Industrial School for Girls, where Mrs. Carr first met Rosa Parks, a graceful, dutiful student with stellar grades.

Even as a child, Mrs. Parks, who died in October, was humble and unassuming, said Mrs. Carr, "so we couldn't imagine her being arrested."

Montgomery, a slow Southern city, became a crossroads in the movement. Not only was Mrs. Parks there, but an Atlanta Baptist minister, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and his young wife, Coretta, had begun married life in the cotton state.

Mrs. Carr befriended them, too.

She was with Mrs. Parks on a Sunday afternoon in 1954 when they went to an NAACP meeting to greet Dr. King.

"Rosa and I were sitting in church together. I touched Rosa and said, 'He's something else,' " she said.

His delivery and style were different, said Mrs. Carr. "Of course, back then, we never dreamed he'd be sent by God to lead his people."

As a highly educated, charismatic preacher, Dr. King was chosen as the first president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, an organization formed to support the boycott and to push for equality and jobs for blacks. Since 1967, Mrs. Carr has been president of the group.

Mrs. Carr said she had a glimpse of the "real" Coretta Scott King in October 1958, when Dr. King was stabbed in Harlem. With a group of other women, Mrs. Carr went to the King home, and as Mrs. King, who died last week, prepared to go to her husband's bedside, she was unflappable.

"I remember she was telling everybody what to take care of in her absence and what to pack. She even told someone where to find a matching belt she wanted to wear with an outfit," Mrs. Carr said.

"She just had this quality in her that made her not be frustrated. I know she was praying in her heart that God was going to take care of her husband."

After her husband's assassination, when Mrs. King was struggling with building the King Center in Atlanta, Mrs. Carr said, one night, they talked on the phone until 1 a.m.

"She just shared her troubles and conflicts that people were having because they told her that King wouldn't be concerned about the center," she said.

But Mrs. Carr, a farmer's daughter, has not just watched from the sidelines. For half a century, she's waged her own battle for civil rights.

She named her son, Arlam Jr., as a litigant in the effort to desegregate Montgomery Public Schools.

She's been active in the Friendly Supper Club and Leadership Montgomery, which seek to unify blacks and whites and promote decent jobs, good homes and better education for all children.

"We've come a long way," said Mrs. Carr, "but everything is not all right. We still have a long way to go."