From Queens to Quantico: A United States Marine’s Story (paperback)

From Queens to Quantico: A United States Marine's Story . . . traces a period during which then PFC George Daniels (now Ahmad) experienced deep conflict between his military duty as a Marine and his budding knowledge of what it is to be black in America. He volunteered for the Marine Corps in 1966, intending to make it a career. Yet it was his first interaction with racial discrimination while in uniform that placed him on a very different trajectory -- a course that prompted him to question the role of Blacks in Viet Nam. He volunteered for the Marine Corps in 1966, intending to make it a career. Yet it was his first interaction with racial discrimination while in uniform that placed him on a very different trajectory -- a course that prompted him to question the role of Blacks in Viet Nam.'He could have kept his inquiries to himself, but his passion drove him to engage in dialogues with other Black Marines. These intimate conversations resulted in his being sentenced to ten years at hard labor in the Naval Disciplinary Command at Portsmouth, New Hampshire -- and a dishonorable discharge. It was during his incarceration that he would correspond with his brother James, who was serving more than 40 years in the .clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York -- for first-degree murder. George and James may have been incarcerated at the same time for a while, but that is where the similarities ended. The disparate routes their lives were to take would come to mean life for one . . . and death for the other.