Wayne LeRoi Dernoncourt, a union organizer and official in the Textile Workers Union of America, was born in Springfield, Illinois, on June 15, 1918. He was the son of Joseph Dernoncourt, himself a union organizer, and Amelia Dernoncourt. Starting work while still a minor, Dernoncourt soon became involved in union organization, serving on the Steel Workers Organizing Committee during the 1930s. Dernoncourt married Leona Lambeseder (1920-1996), and the couple would have three children. After serving in the U. S. Army during World War II, Dernoncourt joined the staff of the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) in February 1946. He became a vice-president of the union in 1964. When the TWUA merged with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in 1976, becoming the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, Dernoncourt was named vice-president and director of the Upper South Region of the Textile Division. He co-authored The Grievance Procedure and Arbitration: Text and Cases (Washington: University Press of America, 1978). In his later years, Dernoncourt lived in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he died on March 16, 1981.

The Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) was formed in 1939 through a merger of the Textile Workers Organizing Committee and the United Textile Workers. As part of the Congress of Industrial Relations (CIO), the TWUA participated in the CIO's push to unionize industries in the American South. Beginning in 1948, the union became embroiled in bitter infighting between factions led by the union's president, Emil Rieve, and its executive vice-president, George Baldanzi. The 1952 biennial convention was particularly contentious and led to the secession of Baldanzi and his faction to the rival United Textile Workers (UTW). A number of TWUA locals followed Baldanzi to the UTW, resulting in a loss of 50,000 TWUA members. In 1976, the TWUA merged with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). The new union had an initial membership of approximately 500,000, but it shrank steadily in the following decades. In 1995, the ACTWU merged with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, becoming the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). In 2004, UNITE in turn merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) to form UNITE HERE.