Johnnie Carr, 97, 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.
A Baptist Health hospital spokeswoman said Carr died Friday night in Montgomery, Ala. She had been hospitalized after suffering a stroke Feb. 11.
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 the newly formed association that led the boycott of city buses in 1955 after Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to whites on a crowded bus.
As the association’s president, Carr helped lead several initiatives to improve race relations and conditions for blacks.
“When we first started, we weren’t thinking about history,” Carr told The Associated Press in 2003. “We were thinking about the conditions and the discrimination.”
Janez Drnovsek, 57, a former Slovenian president who helped lead the country to independence from Yugoslavia, died Saturday, his office said.
Drnovsek, who battled cancer for years, became a political icon in part for working to keep violence at a minimum when Slovenia gained independence in 1991. He later led the country to European Union and NATO membership. In recent years, Drnovsek made a radical shift to a holistic lifestyle and wrote several New Age-influenced books.
Robin Moore, 82, the author of several books, including “The French Connection” and “The Green Berets,” has died after a long illness.
Moore died Thursday night at a hospital in southwestern Kentucky, said Dennis Monroe of Lamb Funeral Home.
Among Moore’s best-known books were “The Green Berets,” published in 1965, and “The French Connection,” published in 1969. He also helped write “The Happy Hooker,” which was published in 1972. He co-wrote “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” which became the signature song of the Special Forces unit.
