The Warren, Arkansas Tornado of 1949

Today I spoke to an old black man who told me about a tornado that hit his farm on Jan 3, '49, when he was 14 yrs old ("I never forgot the date"). His family survived but his house "exploded" and "one black man" was killed; the tornado moved on to nearby Warren AK & killed 54 whites. 

The man claimed angry white residents wanted to even the score by their own hand, but I can find no record of that in the limited web search I did to verify the story.

Specifically, he said that white residents "said God must have been a nig*er that day" because of the uneven death toll.

He said he and his Dad were in the barn and were cut and bruised, but that his Mom, who was in the field, was thrown a distance but uninjured. He also told me the name of the dead black man, but I only remember the first name of Jimmy. He said his Dad found debris in their field from farms 40 miles away.