[2] As a child in East Cambridge, Rose was bullied by Irish-American youths who yelled "Christ Killer" and threw bricks at her as she walked to school.

[3] Despite a lack of support from TOU's male union leaders, the predominately female operators won major concessions: their wages were increased, split shifts were abolished, and their right to organize was guaranteed.

[2] In 1928 and 1935, she attended summer school at the Brookwood Labor College in New York, where she studied organizing techniques and "how to raise the trade-union child".

At Lewandos Laundry in Watertown, Massachusetts, while fighting for equal pay for black workers, she was arrested in a picket line clash.

In 1942, because of her experience with interracial labor organizing, she was appointed to the advisory board of the Boston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

As a member of the Boston Herald Rumor Clinic, headed by Gordon Allport, she worked to combat antisemitism, racism, and Nazi propaganda.

After the war, she urged organized labor to protect women's jobs; campaigned for equal pay for Boston's women teachers; lobbied for legislation to allow refugees, including Holocaust survivors, to immigrate to the United States; served as a member of the Massachusetts Committee for the Marshall Plan; and became involved in the Labor Zionist cause.

[1] On December 25, 1921, Finkelstein married a fellow Russian Jewish immigrant named Hyman Norwood, who owned a tire and battery store in Roxbury.