Excerpt One is taken from Union Maids, a film by Julia Reichert, James Klein, and Miles Mogulescu produced in the 1970s for theatrical release. The filmmakers chose to downplay Stella Nowicki's membership in the Young Communist League. The role of the Communist Party in many popular labor and community organizing efforts of the 1930s has been erased in many public presentations about that period, a legacy of the Cold War and 1950s anti-communist campaigns.

Excerpt Two is taken from Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers a collection of oral histories edited by Alice and Staughton Lynd and published in 1973. One of the first published collections of oral histories from labor union activists, the Lynds wrote in their introduction that they intended Rank and File to be "by and for people struggling with problems…of working-class democracy" within unions and in the larger workplace.