a charge that was later dropped . Exactly what happened inside 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 . That was true of Gates and Crowley , as well as the nation 's first African-American president . All three will meet for a beer today at the White House to help chill the furor over Gates ' arrest and , in Obama 's words , try to turn the events of the past two weeks into a `` teachable moment . '' `` White woman '' targeted It 's a bit ironic , said Whalen 's attorney Wendy Murphy , that the three people who `` reacted badly '' will sit down together while the `` one person who did not overreact '' will be at work Thursday . `` Maybe it 's a guy thing , '' Murphy said , adding of Whalen : `` She does n't like beer anyway . '' Watch Whalen describe `` painful '' criticism '' Gates ' arrest sparked heated rhetoric on TV , radio and the Internet . Initially ,
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- 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. . Whalen 's call -- now clearly the well-intentioned act of a passerby -- ignited a firestorm over race and police relations , a national debate that went all the way to the White House . It was a call she says she never expected to be `` analyzed by an entire nation . '' Gates was arrested by Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley for disorderly conduct ,