The month of May had begun with disappointment for Alice Paul and her National Woman’s Party, who were battling to amend the Constitution to grant all women the right to vote in the 1920 presidential election. The Republican Party had won control of Congress the previous November, promising to support the amendment, but Congress was not scheduled to meet until December, making ratification of the amendment by the states unlikely before the presidential election.

Then, on May 7, President Woodrow Wilson, who was in Paris negotiating the treaty ending World War I, announced a…