Talk of an apology for past racial practices rings particularly hollow for black seamen wrongly convicted of mutiny in 1944. Despite compelling evidence that the conviction was based purely on their race, the U.S. Navy has refused to budge and only the President now has the right to act --a power he has not exercised. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is the author of "Beyond OJ: Race. Sex and Class Lessons for America." His e-mail address is <ehutchi344@aol.com>.

Freddie Meeks was not impressed when he heard that President Clinton might consider apologizing for slavery. Despite pleas from a number of congressional leaders, Clinton has offered no apology to Meeks and 49 other black U.S. Navy men who were wrongly convicted of mutiny during World War II.

Many regard this, the largest mutiny trial in U.S. Navy history, as the greatest travesty of justice in U.S. military history. The evidence they cite is certainly compelling.

On July 17, 1944, the naval depot at Port Chicago, 45 miles southwest of Sacramento, California, was leveled by a blast with the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The explosion killed 320 Navy seamen, 202 of them black.

Meeks, then 20 and a Navy Reserve seaman for three years, was one of the hundreds of blacks assigned the dangerous job of loading ammunition onto ships bound for the Pacific. Meeks and the other black loaders worked under white officers. They received no training in safety procedures or weapons handling, and were often subject to inhuman speedups.

Meeks escaped death only because he had been granted a three-day leave, but the reprieve was short-lived. The explosion began a nightmare chain of events that continues to haunt him.

Immediately after the blast, Meeks and the 257 surviving black loaders were ordered back to the docks and assigned cleanup duty. "It was a mess," Meeks recalls. "They made the blacks stand watch for hours in a warehouse over open barrels in which they had shoved badly mutilated bodies." The men complied -- but this was not the end of the matter. White personnel were given 30-day leaves, but black workers were ordered to resume loading ammunition.

They balked. Threatened with execution, 207 went back to work. But 50 did not, and they were jailed and charged with mutiny.

"It was ridiculous," Meeks recalls bitterly. "We weren't disloyal. We didn't assault any officers. We didn't try to take over the base. We were scared that we would die if we went back to work."

President Roosevelt apparently agreed, writing in a private memo to the Secretary of the Navy that the men were "activated by mass fear ... and this was understandable."

An all-white military tribunal did not agree, however, and after a trial lasting 80 minutes convicted the 50 men of mutiny. All were sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, stripped of their benefits, and given "less than honorable" discharges.

The harsh sentence was hardly surprising. Racism ran deep in the Navy, especially in the philosophy and attitudes of the brass. The Navy was widely criticized for treating blacks worse than any other branch of the service.

The Port Chicago defendants never gave up seeking vindication, and in January, 1991, their prayers seemed to be answered when California's two senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, and 24 members of Congress attached a resolution requesting the Navy to reopen the case to a military authorization bill. President Bush signed the bill.

There was little dispute about the facts of the case. Only blacks were forced to load ammunition. They were convicted by an all-white tribunal. Moreover, they asked only that their records be cleared, a moderate demand that could be met at little political cost.

It was not to be. In 1994, following a two-year review, the U.S. Navy acknowledged that discrimination and poor treatment were the norm for black seamen during World War II, but in an astonishing gyration ruled "neither racial prejudice nor other improper factors tainted the original investigations and trials."

The Navy effectively washed its hands of the case. The Secretary of the Navy informed the men that their only recourse was to seek a presidential pardon. The request has been in his hands since 1994. Clinton has so far not responded to several queries from this writer and others asking what, if any, actions he plans to take.

Meeks finds Clinton's inaction puzzling. Federal officials have apologized or paid reparations to the Tuskegee syphilis victims, Japanese-Americans interned during World War II, Filipino and Vietnamese servicemen who assisted the US military in World War II and during the Vietnam War, as well as individuals harmed by government misconduct.

Meeks remains hopeful. His optimism is rooted in the firm belief that he and the others charged served their country loyally, that their only crime was being black in an era when black lives were degraded. A half century later, this still may be to much for the president, the military, and perhaps the country, to admit.