say her name: armilla flowers
A Forgotten Life Remembered
On Thursday, April 24, 1924, The Newton Record published a front-page headline that read:
“Negro Woman Shot to Death by Husband. Hez Evans Murders Wife in Cold Blood.”
The newspaper told of a violent act but failed to name the victim. She was simply “a Negro woman,” stripped of identity in a few stark lines. The man accused was called “Hez Evans,” likely a misspelling or nickname for her husband, Ezra Evans. Such omissions were common in that era’s reporting—reflecting a world in which the lives of Black citizens, particularly women, were often rendered invisible.
Her name was Armilla Flowers.
Born around 1904 to Sam Flowers and Fannie Wheaton Flowers, she grew up in the rural Altare community of Newton County, Mississippi. Her family were members of Altare Missionary Baptist Church, a cornerstone of faith and community life for Black families navigating the injustices of the Jim Crow South.
On February 21, 1920, sixteen-year-old Armilla married Ezra Evans (1897–1985), the son of Jarred and Mary Mosley Evans of the Lawrence–Bethel community. Ezra was a farmhand and guitarist, known for providing music at neighborhood gatherings. The couple’s early years were marked by hardship. Behind closed doors, their marriage grew violent. Ezra’s temper and jealousy often turned abusive, and after a particularly brutal episode in which he struck Armilla with a hammer, she left him. They had been separated for about six months at the time of her death.
On the evening of Sunday, April 20, 1924, Armilla attended a party in her community. It was a brief reprieve from the rigors of daily life—a chance to be among friends and neighbors. Ezra was also at the gathering, playing his guitar, but he left early, went home, and retrieved a gun.
As the night ended, Armilla began walking back to her home on the farm of Rev. James Edwards Chapman, a respected local minister and landowner. She was accompanied part of the way by others leaving the same event. Along that dark country road south of Newton, Ezra lay in wait.
When he confronted her, he begged her to come back home. She refused. Enraged, he threatened to kill her. As she turned to walk away, he fired, the bullet striking her shoulder and lung. She collapsed by the roadside. Moments later, he fired again—killing her instantly. He then fled toward Morton, Mississippi.
Armilla’s body was discovered along the road where she had fallen—so close to the Chapman farm where she lived and worked. She was only twenty years old.
Ezra was later found asleep in the home of a Black family on the Frank F. Simmons farm near Lawrence. The homeowner quietly alerted Ira Monroe, who notified Constable Cooper. Cooper, accompanied by a federal officer, arrived at the home, arrested Ezra without resistance, and transported him to the Decatur County Jail. He was charged with murder and sentenced to life imprisonment on Mississippi’s state prison farms.
In December 1928, Ezra petitioned the governor for a pardon, insisting he was innocent and describing himself as “an obedient prisoner.” The request was denied. By 1930, he appeared on the census as a patient at the Mississippi State Insane Asylum in Jackson, listed as an unpaid gardener. Two years later, in 1932, his family hired an attorney to submit another pardon petition, arguing that he had acted “in a fit of passion” and that his release was needed to save the family farm from foreclosure. That plea, too, was denied.
Three decades later, in March 1963, Governor Ross Barnett commuted Ezra’s sentence to “time served,” citing his advanced age and deteriorating health. The order noted that Ezra had spent several months at the state prison farm before being transferred to Whitfield State Hospital, where he remained under psychiatric care for many years. He was eventually released into family custody and lived quietly until his death in 1985, when he was buried at the Evans Cemetery in the Bethel community.
Armilla was buried at Altare Missionary Baptist Church graveyard, where the soil still holds her memory. Her death, initially reduced to a nameless headline, is today a testament to both the violence she endured and the resilience of those determined to restore her voice.
Her story is not merely a tragedy from the past; it is a reflection of the silence that once surrounded women’s suffering—especially Black women’s suffering—in an unequal world. It is also a call to action against domestic violence, a reminder that no one’s life should be erased or forgotten.
Her name was Armilla Flowers—a young woman of faith and spirit, whose life and death demand remembrance. To speak her name is to reclaim her place in history, to affirm that she mattered, and to ensure that her voice, once silenced, is finally heard.
sources
- The Newton Record, Negro Woman Shot to Death by Husband, April 24, 1924, p. 1
- The Winona Times, May 02, 1924, p. 9.
- The Newton Record, Thu. Jan. 10, 1929, p.4
- Sun Herald, March 7, 1963, p. 6.