Richard Gentile

Richard Gentile, then 20 and from Hampton, Virginia, was a U.S. Army soldier and one of the "Presidio 27" — the stockade prisoners at the Presidio of San Francisco who, on October 14, 1968, staged a sit-down protest against brutal conditions and the killing of a fellow prisoner, Richard Bunch, who had been shot in the back by a guard three days earlier. Singing "We Shall Overcome" and reading out a list of grievances, the men were charged with mutiny, a capital offense. On appeal in June 1970 the mutiny convictions were reduced to willful disobedience, and the defendants were released after about eighteen months. He was sentenced to six months at hard labor.