Born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1868, Carr attended public schools in New Haven, Connecticut, and Elizabeth, New Jersey.

[1][2][3][4] In private practice in New York for three years, Carr became an assistant district attorney for Manhattan in September 1899, appointed by Asa Bird Gardner.

Carr helped to establish the United Colored Democrats, an influential Black faction within Tammany Hall.

In March 1904, he was appointed as an assistant corporation counsel for the city, overseeing "prosecution of abandonment, aged parent and bastardly proceedings."

He was about to be appointed a municipal judge by Mayor John Francis Hylan when he died of heart failure at his home in Harlem in 1920.