What's the most logical way to complete this passage?

(CNN) -- Lucia Whalen strolled down a sidewalk near Harvard University, enjoying a lunchtime ritual she'd repeated many times in her 15 years working in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But on this day, July 16, her outing would become something else altogether -- the first steps in a national drama. President Obama has invited police Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates for beer. An older woman approached Whalen, worried that she'd just witnessed two men breaking into a home. That's when Whalen, a first-generation Portuguese-American, called 911 from her cell phone -- alerting police to 17 Ware St. -- the home, as it turns out, of renowned Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Exactly what happened inside
Henry Louis Gates' home may never be known, but it seems clear that the key players in this saga brought their own personal history with race to the moment.