Marie Bankhead Owen opposed suffrage for women and actively lobbied against ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment as the legislative chair of the Alabama Women’s Anti-Ratification League. Owen opposed the federal amendment because she believed voting to be a states’ rights issue and felt that women’s suffrage would reopen opportunities for African Americans to vote. Upon the death of her husband, Thomas M. Owen, in 1920, she became the second woman to head a state agency in Alabama when she was appointed director of the Alabama Department of Archives and History. She served in that capacity for 35 years. Marie Owen remained a lifelong advocate for states’ rights.

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