Cammer, Harold

Harold Cammer, 86, Champion of Labor And Rights Lawyer By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER Published: October 25, 1995 Harold I. Cammer, a lawyer who championed the rights of workers, labor unions, accused Communists and victims of racial bigotry, died on Saturday at his home in Mamaroneck, N.Y. He was 86.

In a career that began in 1932 when Mr. Cammer graduated from Harvard Law School and ended some 40 years later with his retirement, Mr. Cammer numbered among his clients major unions like the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the brewery workers', the New York teachers', the furriers', the leather workers' and the Amalgamated Meat Cutters. During the widespread Communist hunts of the 1950's, he defended union officers and teachers, especially in connection with their appearances before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and its counterparts in New York State.

Mr. Cammer was also a founder and active member of the National Lawyers Guild, a nationwide organization noted for its concern with liberal causes and civil rights, as well as a volunteer lawyer in the civil rights movement in the South in the 1960's. He was co-lead counsel in the successful defense of more than 700 students arrested during the sit-in at Columbia University in 1968 and, with his son, Robert, the author of a widely circulated legal analysis of the unlawfulness of the war in Vietnam.

Mr. Cammer, who was born to poor Russian immigrant parents in Manhattan in 1909, graduated from City College in 1929 and was admitted on a full scholarship to Harvard Law School. Except for military service during World War II, he spent his career practicing law. His firm, Pressman, Witt & Cammer, evolved into Cammer & Shapiro, a Manhattan firm specializing in labor law, where he worked until he retired.

In addition to his son, of Larchmont, N.Y., Mr. Cammer is survived by his wife of 59 years, Florence Glantz Cammer; a daughter, Margaret Cammer, the supervising judge of the Brooklyn Civil Court; three brothers, Moses, of Waban, Mass.; Russell, of Brooklyn and William, of Los Angeles, one grandson, and one great-granddaughter.

A version of this obituary; biography appeared in print on October 25, 1995, on page D21 of the New York edition.