President Bill Clinton recently granted a pardon clearing the name of Freddie Meeks, an 80-year-old black man convicted of mutiny in a 1944 wartime incident with racial overtones. Meeks' presidential pardon was among 37 granted in a traditional Christmas practice. Five of the pardons were for crimes involving the illegal importing or sale of marijuana. Meeks, as a navy seaman second class, was at the Port Chicago munitions base near San Francisco on July 17, 1944, when a huge explosion killed 320 men, most of them African- American sailors who were loading ammunition onto ships. It was the worst U.S. home-front disaster of the Second World War. Black sailors were ordered after the accident to pick up the pieces of dismembered bodies, then resume loading.