Biography
Keith Mather was a U.S. Army private and one of the leaders of the "Presidio 27," the stockade prisoners at the Presidio of San Francisco who staged a sit-down protest on October 14, 1968. The protest erupted after a guard shot and killed a fellow prisoner, Richard Bunch; the men sang "We Shall Overcome," read a list of grievances, and were charged with mutiny, which carried a potential death penalty. Mather, who had earlier taken antiwar sanctuary in a San Francisco church with the "Nine for Peace," escaped from the stockade on Christmas Eve 1968 with Walter Pawlowski and fled to Canada. He lived there in exile for some fifteen years; after returning to the United States he was arrested in 1984, court-martialed, and imprisoned at Fort Ord before his release in 1985 — his attorney called him the last American prisoner of conscience of the Vietnam War.
Photo credit
Amnesty International’s 1986 report, covering 1985, records its March clemency appeal for Keith Mather. It reports military detention following his December 1984 arrest, reduction of his sentence to ten months, and actual release in April 1985. Ten months was the reduced sentence, not ten months actually served during the December–April stay. Its statement that he lived in Canada until 1980 conflicts with the existing biography’s longer exile chronology; no precise exile endpoint or sentencing day is inferred.
The Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors’ November–December 1968 News Notes lists Keith Mather among its current prisoners at Presidio. This contemporary roster corroborates actual confinement during the issue’s reporting period. It is a dated custody observation, not an admission, release, transfer date or measure of total time served.
