Around noon August 23, 1917, Lee Sparks and Rufus Daniels, two Houston police officers, disrupted a gathering on a street corner in Houston's predominantly-black San Felipe district by firing warning shots. Sparks, pursuing those who fled the gunshots, burst into the home of a local woman, Sara Travers. He did not find any of the citizens he was chasing and after refusing to believe Travers protestations that she had no knowledge of the whereabouts of anyone fleeing, struck her and dragged her outside dressed only in a nightgown and arrested her.