Lola Hendricks grew up in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1940s, then one of the most segregated cities in the South. In the 1950's, Birmingham's segregation ordinances banned African Americans from using city parks, playgrounds, and golf courses; they were refused service at lunch counters and were relegated to using "colored" water fountains and bathrooms; they were forced to sit in the back of buses, even after bus segregation was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court; and black children were prohibited from attending the same schools as white children, even after the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional.

A corrupt police department enforced the status quo by condoning police brutality and refusing to investigate or punish acts of violence against African Americans, such as the Ku Klux Klan's castration of an innocent young black man named Judge Aaron in the early 1950s. (Aaron was saved when Klan members, unaware of its antiseptic nature, poured turpentine on his wounds.) Discrimination and racial violence isolated Birmingham's black community, but it also strengthened the resolve of African Americans to fight segregation.

In 1956, Alabama state officials outlawed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for its role in the Montgomery bus boycott. In response, Hendricks joined civil rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth and other African Americans to form the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR). The ACMHR organized demonstrations and boycotts to protest segregation in Birmingham's schools and businesses. The group also challenged segregation laws by openly defying them and by filing lawsuits to overturn them. In 1961, the ACMHR won a lawsuit to integrate Birmingham's 67 city parks. Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor retaliated by closing the parks.

Hendricks used her position at a large black-owned insurance agency to make connections in the business community and raise money for the Civil Rights movement. Hendricks later worked for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), headed by Martin Luther King Jr., where she served as secretary to the SCLC's executive director, Wyatt T. Walker.

In 1963, Hendricks' daughter, Audrey, was one of the youngest children to march in the Children's Crusade in Birmingham, in which approximately 2,000 school children were arrested and jailed. The campaign for civil rights in Birmingham and the ensuing racial violence focused national attention on segregation and racial tension, setting the stage for the 1963 March on Washington, and for President John F. Kennedy to draft civil rights legislation, which. ultimately became the Civil Rights Act of 1964.