On March 25, 1931, the Southern Railway line between Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee, had nine black youths who were riding on a freight train with several white males and two white women. A fight broke out between the white and black groups near the Lookout Mountain tunnel, and the whites were kicked off the train. The whites went to a sheriff in the nearby town Paint Rock, Alabama, and claimed that they were assaulted by the blacks on the train. The sheriff gathered a posse and gave orders to search for and "capture every Negro on the train." The posse arrested all black passengers on the train for assault.