Harry H. Wachtel

Harry Howard Wachtel (26 March 1917 – 3 February 1997) was an American lawyer and businessman who worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr., Clarence Benjamin Jones, and others within the Civil Rights Movement. Wachtel founded the Research Committee, an influential group within King's inner circle that advised King on political and social issues, and helped provide King and the movement with legal and financial connections.

Early and personal life

Wachtel was born in New York City on 26 March 1917. Wachtel encouraged King's legal team to prepare an aggressive and vigorous defense, arguing that the more timid defense undertaken by Wachtel's former legal professor, Herbert Wechsler, provided the court multiple avenues to rule against King's associates and the New York Times. Wachtel felt that King's connections and political knowledge were lacking, and used the Research Committee, which met every 2–3 weeks in New York, to strengthen King's command of policy and world affairs. In preparation for the 1964 eighth annual SCLC conference in Savannah, the FBI increased its surveillance of Wachtel, Learning from surveillance of Wachtel that New York governor Nelson Rockefeller planned to donate $250,000 to King's cause, Hoover requested that a police and FBI contact close to Rockefeller brief him on King's FBI files.

Harry Wachtel papers Harry Wachtel's papers were donated by his wife Lucy Wachtel and Hofstra University trustee Bernard Fixler to the Hofstra University Archives. The papers include 15 cubic feet of papers, 12 cubic feet of printed documents, and are arranged into 17 series.