Lola Hendricks

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.

Early life On December 19, 1932 Lola Mae Haynes, the first of two daughters, was born to Buford and Addie Hanes. Lola Mae Haynes was born in Birmingham, Alabama on 4th Avenue and 15th Street South on the south side of Birmingham. Her father was employed as a coal-truck driver from LaGrange, Georgia and her mother, from Chambers County, Alabama, worked as a domestic cook. Lola Mae Haynes went to school in Birmingham at Cameron Elementary School, graduated, and then went to Ullman High School for two years. In 1949, Haynes attended Parker High School for two years and graduated in January of '51. 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. 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. 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".

Later life Hendricks left her insurance company job in 1963 to join the newly integrated Birmingham office of the Social Security Administration. She was hired originally as a filer but was promoted to the unit clerk before moving to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission where she became a supervisor. She left in 1983 to care for her mother. In 1988 she rejoined the Social Security Administration where she worked until reaching retirement. She continued to volunteer at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and in the mid-1990s she assisted the Birmingham Historical Society in researching movement churches and landmarks for National Register of Historic Places status.

She had two sisters (one predeceased her), two daughters, Audrey Faye Hendricks (1953–2009) and Jan Hendricks Fuller, and one grandson, Joel A. Fuller.