James Alexander Owen (September 6, 1891 – July 6, 1955) was an American medical doctor and politician from Mississippi who was also active in Cleveland and Detroit, Ohio.

By the early 1900s, Natchez Junior College was one of the few local private institutions of higher learning that contributed significantly to the education of African Americans.

[7] When Owen answered the military's call for physicians he was immediately given the rank First Lieutenant in the Army Medical Reserve Corps.

The 92nd Division had been assigned to the trenches to assist the French troops there who had been facing aggressive assaults from the Germans for months.

Owen spent a large amount of his time treating soldiers for illnesses, such as the Influenza, and gas inhalation.

Most African-American soldiers had been assigned to noncombatant engineer units that performed dangerous and hard jobs of digging trenches, forming roads, and fortification against the Germans.

Owen spent his time in France busy taking care of sick men and those heavily injured from building, as the Germans were becoming more aggressive in late 1918.

[18] Owen entered the political sphere in 1932 when he became a member of the executive committee of the Cuyahoga county Democratic Party and served there until 1940.

[19] Life in Cleveland grew to become more taxing as in 1933, Owen's office was intruded by two individuals seeking to rob him.

In Detroit he repeated his close relationship with the National Medical Association, eventually becoming a trustee in the board.

Owen also served as president of the board of trustees of the combined normal and industrial department in Wilberforce University from 1939 to his death, and as vice-president of the Ohio Medical Association.

[21] In 1954, the Journal of the National Medical Association reported Owen and his wife traveling to Europe for the International Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Geneva, Switzerland.