Following a confrontation between a military policeman and some of the Buffalo Soldiers, the situation escalated into a street battle in Bisbee's historic Brewery Gulch.

It was described by author Cameron McWhirter as a "remote... dusty frontier town," ten miles north of the Mexican border.

[citation needed] Two years before, in 1917, posses of Bisbee policemen and citizens had rounded up hundreds of miners and deported them to New Mexico by train.

It is the queerest town and the street ... runs right up-hill its whole winding length with a streetcar line ... there must be several thousand people there, and it is the busiest place you ever saw ... [There was] an enormous general store with everything from carpet tacks to oranges and hair nets.

While the regiment's white officers were attending a prearranged dance, the Buffalo Soldiers went to Upper Brewery Gulch, where the Silver Leaf Club was located.

[3] Kempton and Officer William Sherrill began to disarm the black soldiers, telling them that they could retrieve their weapons from the police station after they left town.

[4] Later that night, at about 9:30 pm, George Sullivan, a white military policeman (MP) from the 19th Infantry, got into a fight with five drunken black soldiers outside the club.

Not long after that incident, Hardwick (who had once worked as a lawman in Washington state) was hired as an officer with the Bisbee Police Department.

[5] The attempt to disarm the black federal soldiers resulted in a street battle, centered on Brewery Gulch, that lasted for over an hour.

According to McWhirter, deputized white civilians participated in the fighting; however, Jan Voogd says there is little evidence that Bisbee's local residents played any significant role.

This was due largely to the activity of Deputy Sheriff Joe Hardwick, who has the reputation of being a gunman and who on this occasion almost completely lost his head.

Bureau of Investigation agents had been surveilling Industrial Workers of the World activity in Bisbee, as the federal government was worried about union organizing.

They reported that "representatives" of the IWW were "coach[ing]" the Buffalo Soldiers on what to expect from Bisbee authorities, telling them about the deportation in 1917, and "suggesting that conflict was imminent".

The 10th Cavalry was permitted to march in the Independence Day parade, under close watch by white US cavalrymen, who had been sent to patrol the streets and prevent further conflict.

Hardwick held a number of law enforcement jobs in Arizona for several more years and later became Chief of Police in Calexico, California.