That man named Wayne Cryts

The #1 question I get from folks who are interested in the Farmers’ Strike is about Wayne Cryts. I know a lot about Mr. Cryts because when I wrote the Georgia Farmers’ Strike, I initially turned in a book that was 10,000 words over my publisher’s limit. Of those 10,000 words that were removed, Wayne Cryts’s story accounted for 95% of it. I decided to cut that portion out since he was from Missouri instead of Georgia.

In 1978, 2 plane loads of protesting farmers left southeast Missouri and headed to Plains, Georgia to protest Jimmy Carter’s agriculture policies. One of those planes crashed shortly after takeoff. Wayne Cryts was in the other plane, which turned around and headed back to look for the lost plane. After finding their friends’ downed plane, the remaining four farmers decided it was too important to miss the protest so they continued on towards Plains. That evening, Wayne Cryts and three other farmers watched the protest from the Plains City Jail until they were released.

In 1981, Wayne found himself in a fight to keep his year’s soybean crop after the local grain elevator went bankrupt. What happened next? Well, that’s a story for another day