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Lola Mae Haynes Hendricks (née Haynes) (December 19, 1932 – May 17, 2013) was corresponding secretary for Fred Shuttlesworth's Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights from 1956 to 1963. She assisted Wyatt Walker in planning the early portions of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's involvement in the 1963 Birmingham campaign during the Civil Rights Movement.White, Marjorie Longenecker (1998) A Walk to Freedom: The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, 1956-1964. Birmingham: Birmingham Historical Society.
In February 1953, Lola Mae Haynes married Joe Hendricks. Lola then went on to study for two years at the Booker T. Washington Business College. After graduating from Booker T. Washington Business College, Lola began employment in the insurance industry at Alexander & Company. The company, owned by John J. Drew and his wife Deanie, had employed Lola Mae Haynes Hendricks as a Clerk and an insurance writer.Huntley, Horace (January 19, 1995) Interview with Lola Hendricks. Birmingham Civil Rights Institute In 1963, Haynes began working for the Federal Government under the Social Security Administration, where she became one of the first African Americans to integrate amongst the whites into the workforce. Hendricks worked in files for about two years, and then was promoted to Clerk Typing and again, to Award Typing.
In the Spring of 1963, Hendricks coordinated the practical office requirements and cultivated local contacts for the combined efforts of the ACMHR and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which Shuttlesworth had co-founded and which was chaired by Martin Luther King Jr. She worked directly with the SCLC's Wyatt Walker during the campaign, helping organize support and logistics for marches and department store boycotts.
It was Hendricks who applied directly to Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor for a parade permit for the first day of marches and was told "You will not get a permit in Birmingham, Alabama to picket. I'll picket you over to the jail."Diane McWhorter (2001) Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster. At Walker's urging she did not actively demonstrate and risk jailing, protecting her behind-the-scenes importance to the movement. Hendricks' nine-year-old daughter, Audrey Faye Hendricks (1952–2009), however, was the only child in her class to participate in the May 2, 1963 "Children's Crusade" that brought national attention to Connor's brutal tactics against demonstrators. She spent five nights in jail as minders got word out to her parents that she was safe.Sznajderman, Michael (Fall 2003) "A dangerous business: Children on the front line." Alabama Heritage She was the youngest known child to be arrested for that protest. The children's book The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, A Young Civil Rights Activist (2017) by Cynthia Levinson, is about that. That book also contains a recipe for Lola Hendricks’s "Hot Rolls Baptized in Butter".
She had two sisters (one predeceased her), two daughters, Audrey Faye Hendricks (1953–2009) and Jan Hendricks Fuller, and one grandson, Joel A. Fuller.
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