In 1945, traveling to England on a labor-exchange trip, as well as observing the conditions of war-torn Britain she would become one of the first African-American woman to represent US labor abroad.

The Stewart home was a gathering place for activists and members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), whose accounts of personal experiences with racism had a lasting influence on Springer.

[3] Springer attended the Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth in Bordentown, New Jersey, between 1923 and 1926, where she was taught by Lester Granger and William H.

[6] The joint efforts of Springer and newly elected union president David Dubinsky started a change that would shape the American work force into what it is today.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and the National Industrial Recovery Act gave union sympathizers more room to grow and spread their message.

She was involved not only in the executive and educational boards, but also was a shop representative and would meet with the factory bosses and settle on prices to make work fair among workers.

That same year she would become the first African-American woman to represent US labor abroad when she traveled to England as an AFL delegate, on a trip sponsored by the United States Office of War Information, to study wartime working conditions in Great Britain.

[11][12] Springer would go on to experience first hand the actions and sacrifices made by Britain and Europe as a whole, from subway tunnels in London being refashioned into air-raid bunkers for the masses.

Springer also met Anna Freud and her psychological work with children dealing with the shock from the constant bombing and worry.

[11] In the 1950s, Springer began working for the AFL as an advisor to newly founded labor unions in Tanzania, Kenya, and Ghana, where she came to be known as "Mama Maida".

She then took an eight-month hiatus from ILGWU to study at Ruskin Labor College, Oxford University, on an Urban League Fellowship.

In 1955, she attended the first International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) conference in Accra, Ghana, as one of five observers, of which she was the only woman.

For the next several years she made her home alternately in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Nairobi (Kenya), and Brooklyn, New York.

She started an exchange program for Africans to study at Harvard University, founded a trade school in Kenya whose mission included expanding opportunities for women, established a post-secondary scholarship for Tanzanian girls, and started the Maida Fund to enable farm workers in East Africa to return to school.

[11] In the course of her work she befriended many of Africa's emerging leaders, including Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana.