June 26, 2025 • 41 mins
In 1971, Harriet Jefferson gives birth to her first child, a baby boy. Reggie Damone Payne is born in San Leandro, just south of Oakland, the oldest of four children.
Reggie Payne's biological father was out of the picture and Harriet moved in with her future husband, Rufus Jefferson, shortly after her son was born. That created a close lifetime relationship Reggie had with his mother and stepfather of growing up in Oakland's inner city and learning from them how to navigate away from the distractions of the streets and focus on things that truly mattered. Education, family, love.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Reggie Jackson rotting two seventy two pplan seventeen homers. He's
bounced back this year forty one runs a bat at end,
a fine all around player.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
It's July thirteenth, nineteen seventy one, and Major League Baseball's
All Star Game is being played at Tiger Stadium in Detroit.
It's a bottom of the third inning, no outs, and
up to the bat steps Reggie Jackson, the Oakland A's
powerful slugger and an emerging national phenomenon. The pitcher, Pirate
right hander Doc Ellis. There is a meatball toward the plate,
(00:35):
and Jackson draws back. His bat steps forward and pop where.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
The lock ry that one is?
Speaker 4 (00:42):
God wight up it is.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
The baseball soars deep into the Motown sky, over the
right field grandstand and nearly out of the stadium. It
is later measured at a staggering five hundred and twenty feet.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
What a smash.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
The smash, the bass sailing to on human heights the
way Reggie flicks his back to the ground as soon
as he hits it. The whole magnificent scene introduces the
nation to the swagger of Reginald Martinez Jackson sixty million
people watch a game on television, Reggie becomes a household
name and takes on a mythical era in Oakland. Two
(01:24):
months later, Harriet Jefferson gives birth to her first child,
a baby boy. She names him after the a slugger.
Reggie Damon Payne is born in San Leandro, just south
of Oakland, the oldest of four children.
Speaker 6 (01:37):
Growing up, Reggie took an interest in sports, playing pickup
football and basketball with neighborhood kids. A soutoed athlete, certainly
not the next Reggie Jackson, but a kid who caught
everything thrown his way. Mainly, his parents kept him focused
on school, in sports, and out of trouble.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Reggie Paine's biological father was out of the picture, and
Harriet moved in with her future husband and Rufus Jefferson
shortly after her son was born. That created a close
lifetime relationship Reggie had with his mother and stepfather of
growing up in Oakland's inner city and learning from them
how to navigate away from the distractions of the streets
and focus on things that truly mattered. Education, family, love.
(02:19):
Harriet was at the center of the family.
Speaker 7 (02:21):
I didn't realize what my kids were going through, but
I knew we'd be okay. You know, we instilled in
our kids that you don't do this, you don't do that.
Speaker 6 (02:33):
You party.
Speaker 8 (02:33):
You can party here at my house.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Harry brought an anchoring presence to a home in the
middle of a neighborhood plagued by chaos and violence. This
is Finding Sexy Sweat, a podcast where me, Jeff Pearlman,
(02:58):
and my colleague Rick Nevis attempt to retrace the life
of our long ago friend and fellow journalist Reggie Bean.
Speaker 6 (03:05):
Better known by his rap name Sexy Sweat.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
To try and learn how our life paths differed so
sharply and why Reggie met such an untimely death after
being handcuffed on the living room floor of his parents'
home in Sacramento.
Speaker 6 (03:19):
The three of us met as summer newspaper interns at Nashville, Tennessee,
and in nineteen ninety three, but then Reggie dropped out
of our lives. We found out only recently he had
died in twenty twenty. What happened during all those years
in between, What forces made Reggie's life so different from ours,
what was he up against, and what led him to
(03:42):
that tragic moment.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
This is episode two sixty nine.
Speaker 9 (03:50):
Village right the way we are in, we're in the
community looks like a suburban pre planned right, nice, looks
really nice. Yeah, very Westlake. All right, So across a
park on the street, right, sure that park there?
Speaker 10 (04:07):
All right?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Let me set record too, all right, so we're recording
up three different devices. So early on in this project,
Ricky and I traveled to Stockton to be with the family,
and I don't know how you were feeling. I was
more excited than nervous. I think, just having done this
job for a long time. It's not like I was
scared about knocking on the door or I thought they'd
be mad at us. We'd had conversations over text and
(04:30):
phone with one of Reggie's sisters, so I wasn't nervous,
but I was definitely curious and intrigued to sort of
get to the bottom of this Where were you?
Speaker 6 (04:40):
I was more nervous than like excited, to be honest,
because yes, we had actually talked to them before. They
seem open to talk to us, but their cooperation was
at the center of this entire podcast, right, Like, if
we go up to them and they're they're very closed
about how much they they want to share, or they
(05:01):
didn't want to get into certain details about Reggie's life,
or they didn't know who we were really and were
kind of skeptical that I really could a torpedo like
the entire project. So I was pretty nervous walking up
to that door and knocking on it, to be honest.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah, it was just a paint of picture. It was suburbia, California, suburbia,
and there was a planned community with a lot of houses,
very nice homes. They were mostly kind of that base
California thing, Hey greetings, Yeah, yeah, how are you. The
thing we had going for is definitely is we had
their shared experience with Reggie, so they knew we weren't
just two reporters from the local newspaper or two reporters
(05:42):
from NPR who heard about this story. We were these
people who had a vested interest in it, Like we
wanted to do this because we cared about this guy
we knew long ago, and we really wanted to tell
his story. I just think when you come in that
position and you're not just a reporter, but we're Rick
and Jeff, people who lived with Reggie in a dorm
at Tennessee State thirty years earlier. I think it made
(06:03):
them feel much more comfortable with who we were and
what we were doing. Hey, I'm Jeff. Hi Jeff, you
brought your donuts.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
Oh you go donuts.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
I've got a Walmart Blueberry.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
So was showing up at the house. We're you know,
we're a little apprehensive, you don't know what's exactly going
to go down, but we're immediately greeted warmly. And there's
his mom, Harriet, who's just as lovely and grace as
could be.
Speaker 8 (06:30):
Harriet Jefferson, I'm Reggie's mother.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
There's also a stepdad, Rufus, who goes by Jeff because
his last name is Jefferson. I'm Reggie's father. I'm Rufus.
Speaker 6 (06:38):
Jefferson and his two sisters were also there.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
There was Crystal, Crystal Jefferson and Reggie's sister.
Speaker 6 (06:45):
And there was also Jeanine.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Jeanine Jefferson, Reggie's sister.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
And we're at this HBCU and here's my roommate, right,
and he's a kid from Oakland again, wearing a chain
link fence as his necklace. A construction worker vest his
name is Nty, but he introduces himself as sexy sweat.
Speaker 9 (07:09):
And I'm like, again like a white twenty one year
old kid from the sticks of New York, and I'm like,
what the hell is going on here?
Speaker 7 (07:18):
Like the Jewish Room and it was the best, and like,
we just have these early, warm memories.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
And even before we knew we were talking about like,
we talked about him whenever we talk, because he used
to say exactly. He'd be like, exactly.
Speaker 11 (07:34):
Exactly that sounds.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
It was funny hearing the family use the term exactly
because for years we've been mimicking Reggie saying exactly. And
I always thought it was just us and maybe this
little thing we had with Reggie, But it turns out
he was kind of mister exactly for his family too.
They had food out, They were incredibly engaging, They were
as warm and nice. Our biggest problem, as two guys
(07:57):
who don't have a lot of experience in the in
person podcast is they all kept talking at the same
time together. So there's a lot of blah blah blah
blah blah because they all wanted to talk, and they
all wanted to talk about their brother. They all want
to talk about not just what he went through in
the tragedy, but who he was. I think it's important
that people understand he was a real person and a
smart eye, a person worthy of love and affection and
(08:19):
worthy of some attention. So I thought that was really
important to them that we were there not just to
tell the story of the tragedy, but to tell the
story of Reggie.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
And I was like, Oh, we could be on the
side because Reggie.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
It was going to be a sports broadcaster.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, you said, that's what he wanted to do. Yeah,
did you want to be a broadcaster like vac journalism.
Speaker 8 (08:41):
We want to talk to people just how big it is.
Speaker 7 (08:45):
Yeah, you know, like you say, the determined to get
his degree.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Well, and he did it. He did get it right,
he got it. He got it.
Speaker 6 (09:02):
I kind of remember as we were talking, Harriet pulls
out this black spiral notebook and she places it on
the table and it's crammed with photos and movie tickets
and like mementos from Reggie's life. There was a color
photo of baby Reggie and a blue and white striped
(09:22):
jumper laying on his belly, smiling for the camera.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
That's my baby. Where you was? He worn?
Speaker 7 (09:29):
Seventy one seventy one he was always smiling.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
He was a happy baby. Was he easy?
Speaker 7 (09:36):
Yeah, pretty fast, stood up on his own, like six
months old, start walking before one talking.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Just a thing I had to remind of. Reggie used
to scoot on the back of his head. He'd never crawled.
His feet was too big. One of the things that
struck me sitting the and listening to Harriet is how
when someone dies, someone you really love dies and then
(10:08):
you're talking about him and you really dive into it.
It's almost like you forget that this person is gone,
and you just are overcome by these just warm, beautiful
memories and these little details about what this person loved
to eat and how they wear their hair, and the
eyes of their life and the struggles of their life,
and you get transported back. Like It's one of the
beauties of conversation and also interviewing people, is you're there
(10:30):
and you're talking about Reggie, and for a moment, it's
weird because you actually forget that he's deceased and you're
just caught up in the memories of his life. And
that's like, I think it's one of the great joys
of being a journalist is you allow people to bring
back someone through stories and through memories, and I kind
of feel like that's what happened when we were with them.
Speaker 6 (10:49):
And it's really amazing moments like they do get transported
back to these specific moments, right, Like I remember them
talking about how Reggie was a skinny baby and he
had a head full of hair except for one hair
sticking up like falfa.
Speaker 7 (11:03):
Yeah, we got falfa, and I would brush it and
brush it and pop right back up.
Speaker 6 (11:09):
And like you could see that they get transported back
to this moment where Reggie was a baby, like in
their arms. It's a it's a pretty special moment. There
were great school portraits of Reggie and wide collared polyestera shirts.
She had an old yearbook, she had college acceptance letters.
She just had this plethora of memories from like Reggie's.
Speaker 7 (11:33):
Life, baseball cards, music always Reggie liked, from rap to
Frank Sinatra, Yes you namely played.
Speaker 6 (11:43):
It was like really great to see too that once
they started talking, like it just kind of opened up
the actual floodgates, right, and then there's just these stories
just sort of pouring out of them, one after another.
It was pretty amazing that even.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Our house Brookville, the kids would come here, we would
come outside.
Speaker 10 (12:00):
I played baseball and next door at this.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
House, and just in front of our house the block
is where all the kids would come.
Speaker 6 (12:09):
One of the more poignant moments for me personally is
when we're talking with the family and Reggie's mother, Harriet,
brings up that Reggie had actually talked about us over
the years.
Speaker 7 (12:20):
Well he kept up with you guys, because he said,
ma'm I know him, that's rich, that's Jeff.
Speaker 8 (12:27):
That could have been me.
Speaker 6 (12:29):
It was really amazing to hear her say that because
we had been talking about him, and she said not
only that he was talking about us over the years,
but that he would mention that that could have been
him also. I mean, it was just a it was
a gut punch to hear that.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
It was like flattering an sad. It was flattering to
know that someone actually followed you and found your career meaningful.
And it was sad because I think you didn't have
to read between the lines to see what they meant,
which is he was somewhat haunted by having been there
with us, having the same experiences as us, and watching
us have these careers in journalism, and him struggling so
(13:06):
I didn't take any joy from it, but it was
surprisingly meaningful to hear that he knew of what we
had sort of been through in our lives as well.
It kind of felt like a family reunion again. I
think they were pretty happy to sort of engage with
us and recollect and it felt like a lot of
what we were doing there was recalling of happy memories. Unfortunately,
(13:29):
not all the memories were good ones. One summer day
when he was ten, Reggie was walking to a convenience
store with his friends after an afternoon of playing sam
up baseball at a neighborhood park in San Leanjo, where
he and the others were confronted by two white police officers.
Reggie describes the incident in his self published book, The
Harassment of Reginald D.
Speaker 12 (13:47):
Pain.
Speaker 11 (13:50):
I've always been kind of a leader, so I sort
of took control and asked them, what do we do.
We just came from the park. Obviously we looked like
a bunch of ragtag our gang, little rascals with bats
and gloves in our hands. Innocy, you know, they replied,
You guys were out there urinated in public and being
(14:13):
loud in the neighborhood. Always intrigues me. How the police
know the truth about something before you do. Hell, we
just wanted to slurp in the bag of the ritos
and we'd be walking on now behind back to East Oakland.
Of course we didn't do that, but that harassment led
to some serious butt kicking over a few months for
(14:34):
my friends when the police escorted us back to my
cousin's house in Sobrante Park. Now I thought the police
were evil and devilish after that incident.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
The incident left the lasting impression on Reggie and on
his mom, Harriet, who worked hard to show her son
from the injustices of the world.
Speaker 8 (14:55):
But he knew that he was not going to be
in trouble. He knew that all he had to do
was tell us, explain to us what happened, and we,
you know, we'll take his word for it.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
You know what's crazy is with the police. How we
see like them beating on black men now like they
used to do that when.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
We were teenagers.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
Kids used to be like fine ho and just take
off running and then they would catch like a thirteen
year old and sham and beat him up and then
try walk and we had to laugh like it was funny.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
And take their money because that.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
Money, because they used to have like wads of money,
lacks of money, Like beat him up, take the money.
And we used to laugh, like how how you got
called like that? Wasn't normal for teenagers to get beat
up by the police, Like yep, the police went next
with Reggie.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
All the time he come home.
Speaker 7 (15:43):
From school, he's walking through the park from the park.
Speaker 6 (15:47):
Station to home.
Speaker 7 (15:49):
He got to walk across the park and they handcuffed
him and all of that.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
How does that affect I don't know. You're Reggie, you're
seventeen or sixteen. You're pulled over by the cops of
the seventy third time for some nonsense you didn't do.
Did you see it take a toll on him or.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Not?
Speaker 2 (16:10):
You know it did a little?
Speaker 13 (16:13):
I think it bucks what you know?
Speaker 8 (16:15):
It hurt him. It hurt him.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
A few years after that incident, the family moved deeper
into East Oakland, renting a small apartment at the Village
Colosseum Gardens, a subsidized housing project also known as sixty
nine Village. This would mark a pivotal time in Reggie's life.
Speaker 6 (16:36):
When Jeff called me a few years ago with the
idea of making a podcast about finding our friend Reggie
Payne aka Sexy Sweat, I jumped at it. We all
have people in our lives who stick in our heads
because of their magnetism or their uniqueness. For the two
of us, that was Reggie. So I wanted to find
him and learn everything he'd been up to since we
(16:57):
parted ways in Tennessee all those years ago.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
But when we discovered he was dead, he was a
gut punch, and neither of us anticipated all those times
we discussed Reggie through the years, I don't think either
of us ever considered that he might be gone.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
I definitely didn't.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
You know, after we left Nashville, and neither of us
really kept in touch with Reggie. And I think part
of it is you're young, and you're going after your
own career and you're chasing, and you kind of assume
you're all doing the same thing. Like I went back
to Delaware for my senior year. I was the editor
of the student newspaper. I got hired back by the
Tennessee and I started as a food and fashion writer.
I'm busy in Nashville learning how to write about food,
(17:36):
which I knew nothing about. Learning how to write about fashion,
which I knew nothing about, and I'm just trying to
make it and I'm covering before long, I'm covering high
schore wrestling, and you kind of figure that's what Reggie
would be doing somewhere. He's probably covering high school wrestling
or covering high school baseball. And we're both two young
aspiring sports writers trying to just scratch and claw and
make our way up. And this is way before, like
(17:58):
there was the Internet, but it wasn't like the internet
now where you can google Reggie Pain or Rick Jervis
and find out what they're doing. It wasn't like that.
And I didn't have Reggie's phone number because he had
never sell, So you just kind of assumed he's doing
what you're doing, and everything's probably going well. And the
kid had talent, and he was young and gritty and
wanted the grind, And I don't know, didn't you think
(18:20):
so too?
Speaker 6 (18:21):
Yeah, for sure, I thought that we would all split
up and like go our separate ways and sort of
continue chasing this sort of dream of ours. Nashville was
really pivotal for me because I used all the clips
that I got in Nashville and went back to the
University of Florida and then got another internship like the
following summer, like the Boston Globe, and got an internship
(18:43):
which later turned into a job like at the Mammy Herald.
And I just assume Reggie was also doing similar stuff
because he was such a talented reporter and a smart guy.
But there was a part of me who basically thought,
you know, Reggie has to go back to Oakland now
as a black man in in Oakland, whether he was
taking someone different path, And I always wondered about that
(19:06):
and wondered whether we would actually stay in touch or not.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
This is a self indictment, but I would actually say
I wasn't even mature enough to have those thoughts, Like
I was kind of from a little hick small town,
and I wasn't thinking about, Oh, it must be a
lot harder for a black kid from Oakland trying to
make it out of his neighborhood, like I didn't even have.
I don't think I had the worldliness or insightfulness at
that time to realize it. And looking back, it's actually
(19:30):
a hell of a question, like the things he had
to go through that I never had to go through
and the things he had to overcome that I never
had to overcome were all hanging there, and I was
just too naive and too sheltered to see it.
Speaker 6 (19:43):
They were in the back of my mind. But I
always thought with Reggie's personality, with his forsome nature, there
never was a doubt that he would break out of
all of that.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
I think going into this project, we definitely both knew
that his background and upbringing would offer many of the
keys needed to unlock some of those questions. And for Reggie,
it really began in East Oakland in the nineteen seventies
and eighties. It was just an exciting but devastating time
for the city and in Reggie's family's cramped department in
the housing project known as sixty nine Village. You know,
(20:20):
Oakland was a place back in the day where people
came from the Deep South to escape Jim Crow. And
it became this spot where you decided a black migration
from the South in the nineteen fifties and sixties post
World War Two, and it really became this place, became
this black almost known as a black city in America.
(20:40):
You know, Oakland's a really funny place, or maybe not funny,
that's probably the wrong word. It's a place that I
think white people and black people in America often see
very differently. For white people, I don't know, they look
at San Francisco like, oh, it's so safe, but stay
out of Oakland. And if you talk to black people,
Oakland is this place and it's gritty and it's full
(21:03):
of scrappiness. And it was the Oakland A's who were
always this scrappy team, Vita Blue and Reggie Jackson, and
it was the Golden State Warriors.
Speaker 13 (21:16):
No my brad yea.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
East Oakland back in the day. It's also the birthplace
of huge civil rights activism. The Black Panther Party started
there in October nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 12 (21:33):
And we're gonna walk on this nation.
Speaker 14 (21:35):
We're gonna walk on this racist power structure, and we're
gonna stay.
Speaker 11 (21:39):
To the whole damn government. Take them up, motherfucker. This
is a whole up. We cover what hours.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
I have to say. Actually, one of the great miscarriages
of educational justice in the American school system is that
we don't learn about the Black Panther Party. Like if
you're a white kid growing up in America and you
even know what they are anymore. You think, oh, they
were bad and they were scary, and the Black Panthers
were mostly about black empowerment and self pride and self belief.
(22:06):
They were inner city school programs, there were inner city
education programs, There are inner city food programs, childcare programs. Truly,
the Black Panthers, more than anything, were about self determination,
self righteousness, and self empowerment. And I think through the
years they've been mispegged as like this anti white group,
and it's actually just not true at all. In fact,
(22:28):
there were a lot of whites involved with the Black Panthers.
They were just a group fighting during the Civil Rights
era for people who were mistreated and subjugated for far
too long.
Speaker 14 (22:38):
Let's get into the inner work within the meaning of
a Black revolution and why black people have a right.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
To take what there is.
Speaker 14 (22:44):
We want freedom, we want power to determine the dest
in our own black community.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Everyone agrees it's the easy drug money that leads to
scenes like this Oakland police marge into a home and
arrest young people in the throes of the illegal drug business.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
I mean, the dark side of it all is the
rise of crack.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Thousands of teenagers and younger children are so thoroughly involved
in using or dealing drugs that in some areas an
entire generation is endangered.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Practice besieged Oakland and many parts of the area where
this epidemic swept through the city, and you just had
a homelessness going rampant and thousands of people dying and
addicts everywhere.
Speaker 10 (23:30):
They just tweak out dislike my friend, he killed this
girl and it was so bad that no they was smoking.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
They was smoking on a pipe and they killed her.
Speaker 10 (23:42):
And through a body in a closet and you know, a
way till they finished smoking.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
The ambulance for and on that.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
When you have a sort of sweeping drug epidemically crack,
all of a sudden, crime picks up, and then people
are scared and violence picks up, and people are how
do I get out of here? And how did my
city and my town that I loved so much? How
did my neighborhood that I love so much suddenly become this,
you know, ground zero for the crack epidemic.
Speaker 6 (24:11):
Reggie and his family moved to sixty nine Village when
he was in junior high. That's the height of the
drug epidemic there. Harriet and Rufus both managed to stay
clear of the drugs. There were hard working people who
basically avoided trouble. But it must have been so hard
to shield Reggie from what was going on just outside
of their own apartment.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
So we could see clearly what was happening because it
was happening in all of our friends, Like how many
of our close friends live with their parents, or how
many of them was living with an auntie or a
grandmother because they had been taken from their parents. It
was just you think about it now and like even
on my friends be like the only normalcy we saw
in our community was us, the only family where you
(24:53):
thought a mom and a dad they were not on
drugs or abusive.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
And this wasn't just a bad face for the community
of Apocalyptic and that Harriet and Rufus were able to
steer their children clear of it while living in one
of the most active neighborhoods. I mean, if we're being honest,
that's nothing short of a miracle.
Speaker 6 (25:14):
Reggie focused on playing baseball and basketball with some of
the neighborhood kids. His stepdad Rufus, spun the Platters and
Tony Bennett on their record player and Harriet fed all
the children who showed up at their doorstep.
Speaker 7 (25:27):
I was called the kool aid mom.
Speaker 8 (25:28):
Everybody, all the kids come to my house, and Reggie
would be the one that go out and start up
a baseball game in the middle of the street.
Speaker 6 (25:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
As the kids got older, Harriet allowed them and their
friends to drink dacker ease and smoke the occasional joint
in the apartment, but the hard drugs and violence were
checked at the door. They were rarity among families at
sixty nine Village, a two parent household with food in
the fridge and no addiction issues.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Their mothers Harriet, but we call her Gear just like
her children and do so like a second mom to us.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
This is the Kwandra Hurt, a longtime friend of the family.
She lived in the projects next to theirs and spent
hours at Reggie's apartment.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
We will be at Deer House until late night every
night when we could stay there because it.
Speaker 6 (26:17):
Was just like an open house.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
There was just like this parent that's so open and free.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
The Quandara also came from a two parent home, so
I asked her wife. Hers and Reggie's family were so
rare at the.
Speaker 13 (26:29):
Time, so I really don't have a clear answer because
it could have been us, because a lot of the
kids that were in our neighborhoods, their parents were not
always like that. Something happened and it tragically changed. So
it could easily have been Deer. It could have easily
been just Reggie's and them dads. Could easily been my mother.
(26:53):
It could have easily been my father. But I guess
God said no Harriet's.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Apartment instead of buzz with neighborhood kids. Stephanie Fraser also
lived in the sixty nine village and she was friends
with Crystal, Reggie's sister.
Speaker 15 (27:07):
It was a place of escape. It was a place
of welcome me. You needed a hot meal, you can
go over there. If you needed words of encouragement, you
can go over there. They were almost like the Huxtables,
like somebody like me. It was very different from where
I came from. It's always been a happy place. Our
(27:28):
dad making gumbo, his mom making peanut butter cookies. It
was like a no judgment all.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
At the time, a lot of great hip hop and
rap was emerging from the Bay Area too Short prim
see Hammer Master p Paris Digital Underground, featuring a young
Tupac Shakur and of course Amp Banks. Although the artists
grew up listening to the East Coast rapp guys like
Grandmaster Flash and L cool Ja, they did a very
(28:00):
unique Fay Areas style. It was less choppy, more smooth,
elongated syllables drawn out a half feet longer. They were
unleashing a new sound, and much of it was finding
its way into Reggie's sixty nine Village apartment. The Quandra
remembers music always emanating from Reggie's room, filling the apartment
and even pouring out through the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Reggie would have these big speakers. You can hear those
speakers through the whole neighborhood, and we know when the
speakers came home. We knew Reggie was playing the music.
It was Reggie's music. We knew that.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
But as Reggie was hold up in his room listening
to the latest two shorter Tony Tony Tony album, he
may have been using the music to mask darker thoughts
bring inside of him.
Speaker 6 (28:46):
Unknown to anyone at the time, there was another crisis
waiting to erupt.
Speaker 11 (28:52):
My future kid's wife home everything. I also think about
death alone.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
The children who live amidst drugs and violence must be
educated and diverted early if they are to have any
chance of escaping from the prevailing life. By the time
a child reaches high school, it may be too late.
Speaker 5 (29:15):
It wasn't your cigarette out, you don't smoke al.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
And they got Castlemont High in East Oakland, Vice Principal
Carol Evans has plenty to do just getting kids to
class and not disrupting the school.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
As readany entered Castlemont High School in East Oakland, music
was the major force driving his life. He was all
hip hop you were baggy pants, popularized by mc hammer.
He rocked high tops and walked with the swagger of
an Ant Bank's lyric. But Castlemont High School was a
sort of school where fights broke out constantly. The drug
trade was everywhere in the school hallways. Glenetta Turner went
(29:53):
to Castlemont around the same time as Reggie. This is
how she remembers it.
Speaker 10 (29:57):
In just the East Oakland period at the time. You know,
it was the height of the crack epidemic, a lot
of teenage pregnancy, a lot of high school dropouts. Our
class started with about three to four hundred people and
million graduated. About one hundred and twenty. So if you
survived and thrive, you know, it was like a miracle
(30:18):
for Reggie.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Well, Reggie was different. Tom Colin was also a castlemon
at the same time as Reggie.
Speaker 14 (30:24):
Every year, Reggie he would get it the Talent Show
and he was trying to get me to get up
those things with him. I said, man, I'm not getting
up there because you know, I'm Scott. You know I'm
screamly shy and I'm still kind of shy.
Speaker 11 (30:36):
But Reggie wasn't.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
He said, man, all I need is for.
Speaker 14 (30:39):
You to do And through this part, I said, I'm
not getting up there with you. But they said, Reggie
per gets out for Reggie got old stage and he
did it sing.
Speaker 6 (30:49):
People were loving him.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Reggie kept entering talent showers and kept winning, building his popularity.
At the end of nineteen eighty eight, in their junior year, Reggie,
Tom and two other friends went to a New Edition
concert that featured Bobby Brown and I'll Be Sure on
the bill. Reggie and his crew at the height of
their Talent Show popularity. Girls were definitely noticing them. Reggie
(31:13):
got tipsy on Barto's and James Wine coolers, apparently his
first experience getting wasted on cheap booze.
Speaker 6 (31:19):
Memories of that night would fade after a while, but
it gave him a souvenir that would last a lifetime.
Speaker 14 (31:25):
Reggie never had a drink in his life, and he
got intoxicator all those two wine coolers. So we had
got so much attention that night. Reggie was like, Yo,
we just gonna call ourselves Sexy Sweat and that's the
name that we just ran with.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
It's funny. By working on this podcast, we finally learned
the oridince story of the name Sexy Sweat. I mean,
we've called Reggie that for the past three decades. With
his new persona firmly in place, Reggie, now also known
as Sexy Sweat, was a presence at Castlemont High. He
parlayed his growing popularity on the dance stage to student government.
(32:06):
Here's Glennetta again.
Speaker 10 (32:08):
I was a student leader, like in my junior high school.
So I was ready to, you know, spread my student
leader rings. But I get there and Who've been charged Reggie?
And it's like, in order for you to become eleventh
grade president, you have to beat Reggie. Reggie knew everybody.
(32:30):
He was like everybody's best friends. And I'm talking about
from the nerves to the the everybody loves Reggie.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Despite all the potential pitfalls of growing up in one
of the East Oakland's most notorious public housing projects, Reggie
was actually thriving. In his senior year at Castlemont High
he was elected student body president. Glenetta Turner actually ran
against Reggie in eleventh grade for student body president, but
later worked with him on student projects, so she quickly
(32:58):
learned that to get any done at Castlemon and needed
to go through Reggie.
Speaker 10 (33:03):
If I a seriously like compare him to somebody modern day.
As a teenager, he looked like in Obama because he
just knew how to talk to people and see them.
If he just had that, you know, he just had
that ability to rally the troops and just get them
(33:24):
to do whatever he said do. He had a love
for Oakland and a love for our school. And that
wasn't easy because, like I said, our high school was
considered one of the worst, if not the worst high
school in Oakland.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Some of the best clearers into Reggie's life at Castlemon
live in a battered high school yearbook from nineteen eighty nine.
You're Reggie graduated, and its pages are weathered and yellowed.
The last twenty or soap pages are the type with
cheeky titles like the best thing about being a senior
is and in ten years I See Myself with blank
(34:03):
spaces for the students to fill out.
Speaker 6 (34:05):
These are found in the back of a lot of
high school yearbooks. Most seventeen year old kids just basically
leave them blank, but Reggie went through and using different
colored pens, filled each one out, adding photos, magazine cutouts,
and other mementos.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
It's an extraordinary insight into his life at the time.
They're name tashed from an alumni career conference and another
one listening him is junior state delegate. There's a concert
ticket for a new edition show and two for run
dmc all at the Oakland Coliseum.
Speaker 6 (34:38):
In the page titled in ten years I Can see myself,
Reggie wrote, quote A proud, handsome, married, employed, loving husband
and father with one or two children. And under another
subhead that says being successful, Reggie wrote, quote being a
good person, maybe a politician, maybe a radio TV personality,
(35:02):
whatever the heavenly Father has in store for me.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
On a page describing his parents, Reggie wrote, I'm the
luckiest guy in the world. My mother is so cool.
Some of the times I just feel so grateful to
have them, my mother especially. I can't overemphasize how much
he means to me.
Speaker 6 (35:19):
There are class photos of Reggie and one of him
in his tucks. There's also a yellow newspaper clipping of
Frederick Douglass, the nineteenth century abolitionist and author, but.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Not all the recollections in his yearbook are positive. Next
to the subhead I daydream about, Reggie wrote, my future, kids, wife, home, everything.
I also think about death a lot.
Speaker 6 (35:45):
There was so much in that your book. I mean,
there are parts of it which like just really gives
you this really clear window into Reggie at the time.
What struck me was how much of it was really ambitious.
You could see that he wanted to do good. He
wanted to have a successful career, but he also wanted
to be just a good person. There's so much there
(36:08):
that shows that Reggie was just striving for bigger things.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
I mean, as journalists, one of the great tools we
have at our disposal when they're at our disposal are
high school yearbooks, because they throw you back to a
time period that's otherwise oftentimes forgotten and lost. So when
I find a yearbook, and I'm sure when you find
a year book, it's like gold, like absolute gold.
Speaker 6 (36:29):
And in Reggie's case, it was even better because he
actually took the time and filled out a lot of
the pages in the back of his book, so it's
just filled with all this really great insight into him.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
It lets you have a conversation with eighteen year old Reggie.
The thing that actually is really striking. I also think
about death a lot. I feel like at a different
point in my life I probably would have just skimmed
over that and thought something. But you know, again, I
spent a lot of time recently in northern California in
different areas of low income housing and the projects. And
(37:02):
one thing I found among black men in particular, like
in Marine City, where I spent a lot of time,
they used to refer to it as the hill. Are
you going to make it past the hill? And the
hill was age twenty and that a lot of young
black men thought if you made it past twenty, you
were doing pretty well for yourself. So maybe in him
saying he's thinking about death a lot, he's just seen
what's around him, even though he has a stable household.
(37:23):
The truth of the matter is there's just a lot
of bad stuff swirling around at young Reggie creates a.
Speaker 6 (37:29):
Really interesting question, though, Jeff, because it's really just seven words, right.
I also think about death a lot, but it could
mean so many things, like was he actually looking around
at some of his environment thinking that he could be
next was he just thinking, you know, more sort of
existentially about death When I was in high school, in
(37:50):
middle school, I used to think about death also, but
I used to think about it like in the context
of what is death like, like what exactly comes after death?
And is that what he was doing or was he
thinking more about more sort of immediate death or was
it this sort of inner turmoil in him starting to
really brew up.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
I just think it's interesting he was a kid who,
on the one hand knew he was going to go
to college and on the other hand, saw everything going
on around him. I just think you couldn't be honestly,
and it's weird to say this. Maybe as a white
Jewish guy from suburban you know, sticks of New York,
I don't think he could be a black kid growing
up in that environment and be one hundred percent certain
that your life is going to be okay and that
(38:31):
you're going to make it out. And I have to
have to think him saying, I also think about death
a lot is because you're seeing a lot of young
people dying around you. In the senior year, he applied
to several universities. One of them answered him right away,
Grambling State University, an HBCU in southwestern Louisiana. It became
(38:51):
his top choice. This is how Reggie describes it in
his book.
Speaker 11 (38:56):
I decided to attend Grambling State because they would first
to accept me. I could have gone to other schools.
GSU was my heart. I had two other uncles who
attended the school, but I was the first in my
immediate family to go to college. A black college like
Gramblink takes no back seats to anyone the neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
Through Reggie party, it was a celebration for us neighborhood.
Speaker 13 (39:27):
We was liked you are like when.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Reggie went to college.
Speaker 10 (39:30):
We all went to.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
College booied by the support of sixty nine village. Reggie
practiced things and made the nineteen hundred mile trek from
East Oakland to Louisiana and Gramlink State University's campus. His
plan was in motion. He was going to study journalism,
work at the campus newspaper, and launched a career in
sports journalism, combining two of his life's loves. The world
(39:54):
was his oyster. It was the heavy start of a
pivotal chapter in his life, filled with the untell actual expansion,
new friendships, love, and career quests. It was also where
the voices began creeping into Reggie's head.
Speaker 6 (40:12):
In the next episode of Finding Sexy, Sweat.
Speaker 11 (40:16):
Me, a little boy from Oakland sitting next to college
football's most winning is the successful coach That, for instance,
is grandly a place where everybody is somebody.
Speaker 12 (40:28):
Him and Reggie almost came to blows in the newsroom
over who can write a better Lead's that's how passionate
we were. Backs. I just wanted a girl, so I
had girl names, but I don't even remember anymore. And
when I had a.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Boy, he was like, oh, I guess I just name
after that.
Speaker 11 (40:49):
So I sat in the rear of the Greyhound, I
felt my head snap. Seems all the stress from the
isolation and embarrassment, not to mention living in a small
trailer and come to an.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Need Finding Sexy Sway is a production of School of
Humans and iHeart Podcasts. This episode was reported, written and
hosted by Jeff Peerolman and Rick Jervis. It was produced
by Gabby Watts with production support from Etily's Perez. Zaron
Burnett is. Our story editor. Jesse Niswanger scored and mixed
this episode. George Washington I read the excerpts from the
(41:23):
Harassment of Reginald D.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Paine.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley, and Brandon Barr.
Please leave the show a review and you can follow
along with the show on Instagram at School of Humans.
Reggie Jackson rotting two seventy two pplan seventeen homers. He's
bounced back this year forty one runs a bat at end,
a fine all around player.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
It's July thirteenth, nineteen seventy one, and Major League Baseball's
All Star Game is being played at Tiger Stadium in Detroit.
It's a bottom of the third inning, no outs, and
up to the bat steps Reggie Jackson, the Oakland A's
powerful slugger and an emerging national phenomenon. The pitcher, Pirate
right hander Doc Ellis. There is a meatball toward the plate,
(00:35):
and Jackson draws back. His bat steps forward and pop where.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
The lock ry that one is?
Speaker 4 (00:42):
God wight up it is.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
The baseball soars deep into the Motown sky, over the
right field grandstand and nearly out of the stadium. It
is later measured at a staggering five hundred and twenty feet.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
What a smash.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
The smash, the bass sailing to on human heights the
way Reggie flicks his back to the ground as soon
as he hits it. The whole magnificent scene introduces the
nation to the swagger of Reginald Martinez Jackson sixty million
people watch a game on television, Reggie becomes a household
name and takes on a mythical era in Oakland. Two
(01:24):
months later, Harriet Jefferson gives birth to her first child,
a baby boy. She names him after the a slugger.
Reggie Damon Payne is born in San Leandro, just south
of Oakland, the oldest of four children.
Speaker 6 (01:37):
Growing up, Reggie took an interest in sports, playing pickup
football and basketball with neighborhood kids. A soutoed athlete, certainly
not the next Reggie Jackson, but a kid who caught
everything thrown his way. Mainly, his parents kept him focused
on school, in sports, and out of trouble.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Reggie Paine's biological father was out of the picture, and
Harriet moved in with her future husband and Rufus Jefferson
shortly after her son was born. That created a close
lifetime relationship Reggie had with his mother and stepfather of
growing up in Oakland's inner city and learning from them
how to navigate away from the distractions of the streets
and focus on things that truly mattered. Education, family, love.
(02:19):
Harriet was at the center of the family.
Speaker 7 (02:21):
I didn't realize what my kids were going through, but
I knew we'd be okay. You know, we instilled in
our kids that you don't do this, you don't do that.
Speaker 6 (02:33):
You party.
Speaker 8 (02:33):
You can party here at my house.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Harry brought an anchoring presence to a home in the
middle of a neighborhood plagued by chaos and violence. This
is Finding Sexy Sweat, a podcast where me, Jeff Pearlman,
(02:58):
and my colleague Rick Nevis attempt to retrace the life
of our long ago friend and fellow journalist Reggie Bean.
Speaker 6 (03:05):
Better known by his rap name Sexy Sweat.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
To try and learn how our life paths differed so
sharply and why Reggie met such an untimely death after
being handcuffed on the living room floor of his parents'
home in Sacramento.
Speaker 6 (03:19):
The three of us met as summer newspaper interns at Nashville, Tennessee,
and in nineteen ninety three, but then Reggie dropped out
of our lives. We found out only recently he had
died in twenty twenty. What happened during all those years
in between, What forces made Reggie's life so different from ours,
what was he up against, and what led him to
(03:42):
that tragic moment.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
This is episode two sixty nine.
Speaker 9 (03:50):
Village right the way we are in, we're in the
community looks like a suburban pre planned right, nice, looks
really nice. Yeah, very Westlake. All right, So across a
park on the street, right, sure that park there?
Speaker 10 (04:07):
All right?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Let me set record too, all right, so we're recording
up three different devices. So early on in this project,
Ricky and I traveled to Stockton to be with the family,
and I don't know how you were feeling. I was
more excited than nervous. I think, just having done this
job for a long time. It's not like I was
scared about knocking on the door or I thought they'd
be mad at us. We'd had conversations over text and
(04:30):
phone with one of Reggie's sisters, so I wasn't nervous,
but I was definitely curious and intrigued to sort of
get to the bottom of this Where were you?
Speaker 6 (04:40):
I was more nervous than like excited, to be honest,
because yes, we had actually talked to them before. They
seem open to talk to us, but their cooperation was
at the center of this entire podcast, right, Like, if
we go up to them and they're they're very closed
about how much they they want to share, or they
(05:01):
didn't want to get into certain details about Reggie's life,
or they didn't know who we were really and were
kind of skeptical that I really could a torpedo like
the entire project. So I was pretty nervous walking up
to that door and knocking on it, to be honest.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah, it was just a paint of picture. It was suburbia, California, suburbia,
and there was a planned community with a lot of houses,
very nice homes. They were mostly kind of that base
California thing, Hey greetings, Yeah, yeah, how are you. The
thing we had going for is definitely is we had
their shared experience with Reggie, so they knew we weren't
just two reporters from the local newspaper or two reporters
(05:42):
from NPR who heard about this story. We were these
people who had a vested interest in it, Like we
wanted to do this because we cared about this guy
we knew long ago, and we really wanted to tell
his story. I just think when you come in that
position and you're not just a reporter, but we're Rick
and Jeff, people who lived with Reggie in a dorm
at Tennessee State thirty years earlier. I think it made
(06:03):
them feel much more comfortable with who we were and
what we were doing. Hey, I'm Jeff. Hi Jeff, you
brought your donuts.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
Oh you go donuts.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
I've got a Walmart Blueberry.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
So was showing up at the house. We're you know,
we're a little apprehensive, you don't know what's exactly going
to go down, but we're immediately greeted warmly. And there's
his mom, Harriet, who's just as lovely and grace as
could be.
Speaker 8 (06:30):
Harriet Jefferson, I'm Reggie's mother.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
There's also a stepdad, Rufus, who goes by Jeff because
his last name is Jefferson. I'm Reggie's father. I'm Rufus.
Speaker 6 (06:38):
Jefferson and his two sisters were also there.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
There was Crystal, Crystal Jefferson and Reggie's sister.
Speaker 6 (06:45):
And there was also Jeanine.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Jeanine Jefferson, Reggie's sister.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
And we're at this HBCU and here's my roommate, right,
and he's a kid from Oakland again, wearing a chain
link fence as his necklace. A construction worker vest his
name is Nty, but he introduces himself as sexy sweat.
Speaker 9 (07:09):
And I'm like, again like a white twenty one year
old kid from the sticks of New York, and I'm like,
what the hell is going on here?
Speaker 7 (07:18):
Like the Jewish Room and it was the best, and like,
we just have these early, warm memories.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
And even before we knew we were talking about like,
we talked about him whenever we talk, because he used
to say exactly. He'd be like, exactly.
Speaker 11 (07:34):
Exactly that sounds.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
It was funny hearing the family use the term exactly
because for years we've been mimicking Reggie saying exactly. And
I always thought it was just us and maybe this
little thing we had with Reggie, But it turns out
he was kind of mister exactly for his family too.
They had food out, They were incredibly engaging, They were
as warm and nice. Our biggest problem, as two guys
(07:57):
who don't have a lot of experience in the in
person podcast is they all kept talking at the same
time together. So there's a lot of blah blah blah
blah blah because they all wanted to talk, and they
all wanted to talk about their brother. They all want
to talk about not just what he went through in
the tragedy, but who he was. I think it's important
that people understand he was a real person and a
smart eye, a person worthy of love and affection and
(08:19):
worthy of some attention. So I thought that was really
important to them that we were there not just to
tell the story of the tragedy, but to tell the
story of Reggie.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
And I was like, Oh, we could be on the
side because Reggie.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
It was going to be a sports broadcaster.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, you said, that's what he wanted to do. Yeah,
did you want to be a broadcaster like vac journalism.
Speaker 8 (08:41):
We want to talk to people just how big it is.
Speaker 7 (08:45):
Yeah, you know, like you say, the determined to get
his degree.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Well, and he did it. He did get it right,
he got it. He got it.
Speaker 6 (09:02):
I kind of remember as we were talking, Harriet pulls
out this black spiral notebook and she places it on
the table and it's crammed with photos and movie tickets
and like mementos from Reggie's life. There was a color
photo of baby Reggie and a blue and white striped
(09:22):
jumper laying on his belly, smiling for the camera.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
That's my baby. Where you was? He worn?
Speaker 7 (09:29):
Seventy one seventy one he was always smiling.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
He was a happy baby. Was he easy?
Speaker 7 (09:36):
Yeah, pretty fast, stood up on his own, like six
months old, start walking before one talking.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Just a thing I had to remind of. Reggie used
to scoot on the back of his head. He'd never crawled.
His feet was too big. One of the things that
struck me sitting the and listening to Harriet is how
when someone dies, someone you really love dies and then
(10:08):
you're talking about him and you really dive into it.
It's almost like you forget that this person is gone,
and you just are overcome by these just warm, beautiful
memories and these little details about what this person loved
to eat and how they wear their hair, and the
eyes of their life and the struggles of their life,
and you get transported back. Like It's one of the
beauties of conversation and also interviewing people, is you're there
(10:30):
and you're talking about Reggie, and for a moment, it's
weird because you actually forget that he's deceased and you're
just caught up in the memories of his life. And
that's like, I think it's one of the great joys
of being a journalist is you allow people to bring
back someone through stories and through memories, and I kind
of feel like that's what happened when we were with them.
Speaker 6 (10:49):
And it's really amazing moments like they do get transported
back to these specific moments, right, Like I remember them
talking about how Reggie was a skinny baby and he
had a head full of hair except for one hair
sticking up like falfa.
Speaker 7 (11:03):
Yeah, we got falfa, and I would brush it and
brush it and pop right back up.
Speaker 6 (11:09):
And like you could see that they get transported back
to this moment where Reggie was a baby, like in
their arms. It's a it's a pretty special moment. There
were great school portraits of Reggie and wide collared polyestera shirts.
She had an old yearbook, she had college acceptance letters.
She just had this plethora of memories from like Reggie's.
Speaker 7 (11:33):
Life, baseball cards, music always Reggie liked, from rap to
Frank Sinatra, Yes you namely played.
Speaker 6 (11:43):
It was like really great to see too that once
they started talking, like it just kind of opened up
the actual floodgates, right, and then there's just these stories
just sort of pouring out of them, one after another.
It was pretty amazing that even.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Our house Brookville, the kids would come here, we would
come outside.
Speaker 10 (12:00):
I played baseball and next door at this.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
House, and just in front of our house the block
is where all the kids would come.
Speaker 6 (12:09):
One of the more poignant moments for me personally is
when we're talking with the family and Reggie's mother, Harriet,
brings up that Reggie had actually talked about us over
the years.
Speaker 7 (12:20):
Well he kept up with you guys, because he said,
ma'm I know him, that's rich, that's Jeff.
Speaker 8 (12:27):
That could have been me.
Speaker 6 (12:29):
It was really amazing to hear her say that because
we had been talking about him, and she said not
only that he was talking about us over the years,
but that he would mention that that could have been
him also. I mean, it was just a it was
a gut punch to hear that.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
It was like flattering an sad. It was flattering to
know that someone actually followed you and found your career meaningful.
And it was sad because I think you didn't have
to read between the lines to see what they meant,
which is he was somewhat haunted by having been there
with us, having the same experiences as us, and watching
us have these careers in journalism, and him struggling so
(13:06):
I didn't take any joy from it, but it was
surprisingly meaningful to hear that he knew of what we
had sort of been through in our lives as well.
It kind of felt like a family reunion again. I
think they were pretty happy to sort of engage with
us and recollect and it felt like a lot of
what we were doing there was recalling of happy memories. Unfortunately,
(13:29):
not all the memories were good ones. One summer day
when he was ten, Reggie was walking to a convenience
store with his friends after an afternoon of playing sam
up baseball at a neighborhood park in San Leanjo, where
he and the others were confronted by two white police officers.
Reggie describes the incident in his self published book, The
Harassment of Reginald D.
Speaker 12 (13:47):
Pain.
Speaker 11 (13:50):
I've always been kind of a leader, so I sort
of took control and asked them, what do we do.
We just came from the park. Obviously we looked like
a bunch of ragtag our gang, little rascals with bats
and gloves in our hands. Innocy, you know, they replied,
You guys were out there urinated in public and being
(14:13):
loud in the neighborhood. Always intrigues me. How the police
know the truth about something before you do. Hell, we
just wanted to slurp in the bag of the ritos
and we'd be walking on now behind back to East Oakland.
Of course we didn't do that, but that harassment led
to some serious butt kicking over a few months for
(14:34):
my friends when the police escorted us back to my
cousin's house in Sobrante Park. Now I thought the police
were evil and devilish after that incident.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
The incident left the lasting impression on Reggie and on
his mom, Harriet, who worked hard to show her son
from the injustices of the world.
Speaker 8 (14:55):
But he knew that he was not going to be
in trouble. He knew that all he had to do
was tell us, explain to us what happened, and we,
you know, we'll take his word for it.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
You know what's crazy is with the police. How we
see like them beating on black men now like they
used to do that when.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
We were teenagers.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
Kids used to be like fine ho and just take
off running and then they would catch like a thirteen
year old and sham and beat him up and then
try walk and we had to laugh like it was funny.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
And take their money because that.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
Money, because they used to have like wads of money,
lacks of money, Like beat him up, take the money.
And we used to laugh, like how how you got
called like that? Wasn't normal for teenagers to get beat
up by the police, Like yep, the police went next
with Reggie.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
All the time he come home.
Speaker 7 (15:43):
From school, he's walking through the park from the park.
Speaker 6 (15:47):
Station to home.
Speaker 7 (15:49):
He got to walk across the park and they handcuffed
him and all of that.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
How does that affect I don't know. You're Reggie, you're
seventeen or sixteen. You're pulled over by the cops of
the seventy third time for some nonsense you didn't do.
Did you see it take a toll on him or.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Not?
Speaker 2 (16:10):
You know it did a little?
Speaker 13 (16:13):
I think it bucks what you know?
Speaker 8 (16:15):
It hurt him. It hurt him.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
A few years after that incident, the family moved deeper
into East Oakland, renting a small apartment at the Village
Colosseum Gardens, a subsidized housing project also known as sixty
nine Village. This would mark a pivotal time in Reggie's life.
Speaker 6 (16:36):
When Jeff called me a few years ago with the
idea of making a podcast about finding our friend Reggie
Payne aka Sexy Sweat, I jumped at it. We all
have people in our lives who stick in our heads
because of their magnetism or their uniqueness. For the two
of us, that was Reggie. So I wanted to find
him and learn everything he'd been up to since we
(16:57):
parted ways in Tennessee all those years ago.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
But when we discovered he was dead, he was a
gut punch, and neither of us anticipated all those times
we discussed Reggie through the years, I don't think either
of us ever considered that he might be gone.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
I definitely didn't.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
You know, after we left Nashville, and neither of us
really kept in touch with Reggie. And I think part
of it is you're young, and you're going after your
own career and you're chasing, and you kind of assume
you're all doing the same thing. Like I went back
to Delaware for my senior year. I was the editor
of the student newspaper. I got hired back by the
Tennessee and I started as a food and fashion writer.
I'm busy in Nashville learning how to write about food,
(17:36):
which I knew nothing about. Learning how to write about fashion,
which I knew nothing about, and I'm just trying to
make it and I'm covering before long, I'm covering high
schore wrestling, and you kind of figure that's what Reggie
would be doing somewhere. He's probably covering high school wrestling
or covering high school baseball. And we're both two young
aspiring sports writers trying to just scratch and claw and
make our way up. And this is way before, like
(17:58):
there was the Internet, but it wasn't like the internet
now where you can google Reggie Pain or Rick Jervis
and find out what they're doing. It wasn't like that.
And I didn't have Reggie's phone number because he had
never sell, So you just kind of assumed he's doing
what you're doing, and everything's probably going well. And the
kid had talent, and he was young and gritty and
wanted the grind, And I don't know, didn't you think
(18:20):
so too?
Speaker 6 (18:21):
Yeah, for sure, I thought that we would all split
up and like go our separate ways and sort of
continue chasing this sort of dream of ours. Nashville was
really pivotal for me because I used all the clips
that I got in Nashville and went back to the
University of Florida and then got another internship like the
following summer, like the Boston Globe, and got an internship
(18:43):
which later turned into a job like at the Mammy Herald.
And I just assume Reggie was also doing similar stuff
because he was such a talented reporter and a smart guy.
But there was a part of me who basically thought,
you know, Reggie has to go back to Oakland now
as a black man in in Oakland, whether he was
taking someone different path, And I always wondered about that
(19:06):
and wondered whether we would actually stay in touch or not.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
This is a self indictment, but I would actually say
I wasn't even mature enough to have those thoughts, Like
I was kind of from a little hick small town,
and I wasn't thinking about, Oh, it must be a
lot harder for a black kid from Oakland trying to
make it out of his neighborhood, like I didn't even have.
I don't think I had the worldliness or insightfulness at
that time to realize it. And looking back, it's actually
(19:30):
a hell of a question, like the things he had
to go through that I never had to go through
and the things he had to overcome that I never
had to overcome were all hanging there, and I was
just too naive and too sheltered to see it.
Speaker 6 (19:43):
They were in the back of my mind. But I
always thought with Reggie's personality, with his forsome nature, there
never was a doubt that he would break out of
all of that.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
I think going into this project, we definitely both knew
that his background and upbringing would offer many of the
keys needed to unlock some of those questions. And for Reggie,
it really began in East Oakland in the nineteen seventies
and eighties. It was just an exciting but devastating time
for the city and in Reggie's family's cramped department in
the housing project known as sixty nine Village. You know,
(20:20):
Oakland was a place back in the day where people
came from the Deep South to escape Jim Crow. And
it became this spot where you decided a black migration
from the South in the nineteen fifties and sixties post
World War Two, and it really became this place, became
this black almost known as a black city in America.
(20:40):
You know, Oakland's a really funny place, or maybe not funny,
that's probably the wrong word. It's a place that I
think white people and black people in America often see
very differently. For white people, I don't know, they look
at San Francisco like, oh, it's so safe, but stay
out of Oakland. And if you talk to black people,
Oakland is this place and it's gritty and it's full
(21:03):
of scrappiness. And it was the Oakland A's who were
always this scrappy team, Vita Blue and Reggie Jackson, and
it was the Golden State Warriors.
Speaker 13 (21:16):
No my brad yea.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
East Oakland back in the day. It's also the birthplace
of huge civil rights activism. The Black Panther Party started
there in October nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 12 (21:33):
And we're gonna walk on this nation.
Speaker 14 (21:35):
We're gonna walk on this racist power structure, and we're
gonna stay.
Speaker 11 (21:39):
To the whole damn government. Take them up, motherfucker. This
is a whole up. We cover what hours.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
I have to say. Actually, one of the great miscarriages
of educational justice in the American school system is that
we don't learn about the Black Panther Party. Like if
you're a white kid growing up in America and you
even know what they are anymore. You think, oh, they
were bad and they were scary, and the Black Panthers
were mostly about black empowerment and self pride and self belief.
(22:06):
They were inner city school programs, there were inner city
education programs, There are inner city food programs, childcare programs. Truly,
the Black Panthers, more than anything, were about self determination,
self righteousness, and self empowerment. And I think through the
years they've been mispegged as like this anti white group,
and it's actually just not true at all. In fact,
(22:28):
there were a lot of whites involved with the Black Panthers.
They were just a group fighting during the Civil Rights
era for people who were mistreated and subjugated for far
too long.
Speaker 14 (22:38):
Let's get into the inner work within the meaning of
a Black revolution and why black people have a right.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
To take what there is.
Speaker 14 (22:44):
We want freedom, we want power to determine the dest
in our own black community.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Everyone agrees it's the easy drug money that leads to
scenes like this Oakland police marge into a home and
arrest young people in the throes of the illegal drug business.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
I mean, the dark side of it all is the
rise of crack.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Thousands of teenagers and younger children are so thoroughly involved
in using or dealing drugs that in some areas an
entire generation is endangered.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Practice besieged Oakland and many parts of the area where
this epidemic swept through the city, and you just had
a homelessness going rampant and thousands of people dying and
addicts everywhere.
Speaker 10 (23:30):
They just tweak out dislike my friend, he killed this
girl and it was so bad that no they was smoking.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
They was smoking on a pipe and they killed her.
Speaker 10 (23:42):
And through a body in a closet and you know, a
way till they finished smoking.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
The ambulance for and on that.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
When you have a sort of sweeping drug epidemically crack,
all of a sudden, crime picks up, and then people
are scared and violence picks up, and people are how
do I get out of here? And how did my
city and my town that I loved so much? How
did my neighborhood that I love so much suddenly become this,
you know, ground zero for the crack epidemic.
Speaker 6 (24:11):
Reggie and his family moved to sixty nine Village when
he was in junior high. That's the height of the
drug epidemic there. Harriet and Rufus both managed to stay
clear of the drugs. There were hard working people who
basically avoided trouble. But it must have been so hard
to shield Reggie from what was going on just outside
of their own apartment.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
So we could see clearly what was happening because it
was happening in all of our friends, Like how many
of our close friends live with their parents, or how
many of them was living with an auntie or a
grandmother because they had been taken from their parents. It
was just you think about it now and like even
on my friends be like the only normalcy we saw
in our community was us, the only family where you
(24:53):
thought a mom and a dad they were not on
drugs or abusive.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
And this wasn't just a bad face for the community
of Apocalyptic and that Harriet and Rufus were able to
steer their children clear of it while living in one
of the most active neighborhoods. I mean, if we're being honest,
that's nothing short of a miracle.
Speaker 6 (25:14):
Reggie focused on playing baseball and basketball with some of
the neighborhood kids. His stepdad Rufus, spun the Platters and
Tony Bennett on their record player and Harriet fed all
the children who showed up at their doorstep.
Speaker 7 (25:27):
I was called the kool aid mom.
Speaker 8 (25:28):
Everybody, all the kids come to my house, and Reggie
would be the one that go out and start up
a baseball game in the middle of the street.
Speaker 6 (25:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
As the kids got older, Harriet allowed them and their
friends to drink dacker ease and smoke the occasional joint
in the apartment, but the hard drugs and violence were
checked at the door. They were rarity among families at
sixty nine Village, a two parent household with food in
the fridge and no addiction issues.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Their mothers Harriet, but we call her Gear just like
her children and do so like a second mom to us.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
This is the Kwandra Hurt, a longtime friend of the family.
She lived in the projects next to theirs and spent
hours at Reggie's apartment.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
We will be at Deer House until late night every
night when we could stay there because it.
Speaker 6 (26:17):
Was just like an open house.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
There was just like this parent that's so open and free.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
The Quandara also came from a two parent home, so
I asked her wife. Hers and Reggie's family were so
rare at the.
Speaker 13 (26:29):
Time, so I really don't have a clear answer because
it could have been us, because a lot of the
kids that were in our neighborhoods, their parents were not
always like that. Something happened and it tragically changed. So
it could easily have been Deer. It could have easily
been just Reggie's and them dads. Could easily been my mother.
(26:53):
It could have easily been my father. But I guess
God said no Harriet's.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Apartment instead of buzz with neighborhood kids. Stephanie Fraser also
lived in the sixty nine village and she was friends
with Crystal, Reggie's sister.
Speaker 15 (27:07):
It was a place of escape. It was a place
of welcome me. You needed a hot meal, you can
go over there. If you needed words of encouragement, you
can go over there. They were almost like the Huxtables,
like somebody like me. It was very different from where
I came from. It's always been a happy place. Our
(27:28):
dad making gumbo, his mom making peanut butter cookies. It
was like a no judgment all.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
At the time, a lot of great hip hop and
rap was emerging from the Bay Area too Short prim
see Hammer Master p Paris Digital Underground, featuring a young
Tupac Shakur and of course Amp Banks. Although the artists
grew up listening to the East Coast rapp guys like
Grandmaster Flash and L cool Ja, they did a very
(28:00):
unique Fay Areas style. It was less choppy, more smooth,
elongated syllables drawn out a half feet longer. They were
unleashing a new sound, and much of it was finding
its way into Reggie's sixty nine Village apartment. The Quandra
remembers music always emanating from Reggie's room, filling the apartment
and even pouring out through the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Reggie would have these big speakers. You can hear those
speakers through the whole neighborhood, and we know when the
speakers came home. We knew Reggie was playing the music.
It was Reggie's music. We knew that.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
But as Reggie was hold up in his room listening
to the latest two shorter Tony Tony Tony album, he
may have been using the music to mask darker thoughts
bring inside of him.
Speaker 6 (28:46):
Unknown to anyone at the time, there was another crisis
waiting to erupt.
Speaker 11 (28:52):
My future kid's wife home everything. I also think about
death alone.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
The children who live amidst drugs and violence must be
educated and diverted early if they are to have any
chance of escaping from the prevailing life. By the time
a child reaches high school, it may be too late.
Speaker 5 (29:15):
It wasn't your cigarette out, you don't smoke al.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
And they got Castlemont High in East Oakland, Vice Principal
Carol Evans has plenty to do just getting kids to
class and not disrupting the school.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
As readany entered Castlemont High School in East Oakland, music
was the major force driving his life. He was all
hip hop you were baggy pants, popularized by mc hammer.
He rocked high tops and walked with the swagger of
an Ant Bank's lyric. But Castlemont High School was a
sort of school where fights broke out constantly. The drug
trade was everywhere in the school hallways. Glenetta Turner went
(29:53):
to Castlemont around the same time as Reggie. This is
how she remembers it.
Speaker 10 (29:57):
In just the East Oakland period at the time. You know,
it was the height of the crack epidemic, a lot
of teenage pregnancy, a lot of high school dropouts. Our
class started with about three to four hundred people and
million graduated. About one hundred and twenty. So if you
survived and thrive, you know, it was like a miracle
(30:18):
for Reggie.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Well, Reggie was different. Tom Colin was also a castlemon
at the same time as Reggie.
Speaker 14 (30:24):
Every year, Reggie he would get it the Talent Show
and he was trying to get me to get up
those things with him. I said, man, I'm not getting
up there because you know, I'm Scott. You know I'm
screamly shy and I'm still kind of shy.
Speaker 11 (30:36):
But Reggie wasn't.
Speaker 6 (30:38):
He said, man, all I need is for.
Speaker 14 (30:39):
You to do And through this part, I said, I'm
not getting up there with you. But they said, Reggie
per gets out for Reggie got old stage and he
did it sing.
Speaker 6 (30:49):
People were loving him.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Reggie kept entering talent showers and kept winning, building his popularity.
At the end of nineteen eighty eight, in their junior year, Reggie,
Tom and two other friends went to a New Edition
concert that featured Bobby Brown and I'll Be Sure on
the bill. Reggie and his crew at the height of
their Talent Show popularity. Girls were definitely noticing them. Reggie
(31:13):
got tipsy on Barto's and James Wine coolers, apparently his
first experience getting wasted on cheap booze.
Speaker 6 (31:19):
Memories of that night would fade after a while, but
it gave him a souvenir that would last a lifetime.
Speaker 14 (31:25):
Reggie never had a drink in his life, and he
got intoxicator all those two wine coolers. So we had
got so much attention that night. Reggie was like, Yo,
we just gonna call ourselves Sexy Sweat and that's the
name that we just ran with.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
It's funny. By working on this podcast, we finally learned
the oridince story of the name Sexy Sweat. I mean,
we've called Reggie that for the past three decades. With
his new persona firmly in place, Reggie, now also known
as Sexy Sweat, was a presence at Castlemont High. He
parlayed his growing popularity on the dance stage to student government.
(32:06):
Here's Glennetta again.
Speaker 10 (32:08):
I was a student leader, like in my junior high school.
So I was ready to, you know, spread my student
leader rings. But I get there and Who've been charged Reggie?
And it's like, in order for you to become eleventh
grade president, you have to beat Reggie. Reggie knew everybody.
(32:30):
He was like everybody's best friends. And I'm talking about
from the nerves to the the everybody loves Reggie.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Despite all the potential pitfalls of growing up in one
of the East Oakland's most notorious public housing projects, Reggie
was actually thriving. In his senior year at Castlemont High
he was elected student body president. Glenetta Turner actually ran
against Reggie in eleventh grade for student body president, but
later worked with him on student projects, so she quickly
(32:58):
learned that to get any done at Castlemon and needed
to go through Reggie.
Speaker 10 (33:03):
If I a seriously like compare him to somebody modern day.
As a teenager, he looked like in Obama because he
just knew how to talk to people and see them.
If he just had that, you know, he just had
that ability to rally the troops and just get them
(33:24):
to do whatever he said do. He had a love
for Oakland and a love for our school. And that
wasn't easy because, like I said, our high school was
considered one of the worst, if not the worst high
school in Oakland.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Some of the best clearers into Reggie's life at Castlemon
live in a battered high school yearbook from nineteen eighty nine.
You're Reggie graduated, and its pages are weathered and yellowed.
The last twenty or soap pages are the type with
cheeky titles like the best thing about being a senior
is and in ten years I See Myself with blank
(34:03):
spaces for the students to fill out.
Speaker 6 (34:05):
These are found in the back of a lot of
high school yearbooks. Most seventeen year old kids just basically
leave them blank, but Reggie went through and using different
colored pens, filled each one out, adding photos, magazine cutouts,
and other mementos.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
It's an extraordinary insight into his life at the time.
They're name tashed from an alumni career conference and another
one listening him is junior state delegate. There's a concert
ticket for a new edition show and two for run
dmc all at the Oakland Coliseum.
Speaker 6 (34:38):
In the page titled in ten years I Can see myself,
Reggie wrote, quote A proud, handsome, married, employed, loving husband
and father with one or two children. And under another
subhead that says being successful, Reggie wrote, quote being a
good person, maybe a politician, maybe a radio TV personality,
(35:02):
whatever the heavenly Father has in store for me.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
On a page describing his parents, Reggie wrote, I'm the
luckiest guy in the world. My mother is so cool.
Some of the times I just feel so grateful to
have them, my mother especially. I can't overemphasize how much
he means to me.
Speaker 6 (35:19):
There are class photos of Reggie and one of him
in his tucks. There's also a yellow newspaper clipping of
Frederick Douglass, the nineteenth century abolitionist and author, but.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Not all the recollections in his yearbook are positive. Next
to the subhead I daydream about, Reggie wrote, my future, kids, wife, home, everything.
I also think about death a lot.
Speaker 6 (35:45):
There was so much in that your book. I mean,
there are parts of it which like just really gives
you this really clear window into Reggie at the time.
What struck me was how much of it was really ambitious.
You could see that he wanted to do good. He
wanted to have a successful career, but he also wanted
to be just a good person. There's so much there
(36:08):
that shows that Reggie was just striving for bigger things.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
I mean, as journalists, one of the great tools we
have at our disposal when they're at our disposal are
high school yearbooks, because they throw you back to a
time period that's otherwise oftentimes forgotten and lost. So when
I find a yearbook, and I'm sure when you find
a year book, it's like gold, like absolute gold.
Speaker 6 (36:29):
And in Reggie's case, it was even better because he
actually took the time and filled out a lot of
the pages in the back of his book, so it's
just filled with all this really great insight into him.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
It lets you have a conversation with eighteen year old Reggie.
The thing that actually is really striking. I also think
about death a lot. I feel like at a different
point in my life I probably would have just skimmed
over that and thought something. But you know, again, I
spent a lot of time recently in northern California in
different areas of low income housing and the projects. And
(37:02):
one thing I found among black men in particular, like
in Marine City, where I spent a lot of time,
they used to refer to it as the hill. Are
you going to make it past the hill? And the
hill was age twenty and that a lot of young
black men thought if you made it past twenty, you
were doing pretty well for yourself. So maybe in him
saying he's thinking about death a lot, he's just seen
what's around him, even though he has a stable household.
(37:23):
The truth of the matter is there's just a lot
of bad stuff swirling around at young Reggie creates a.
Speaker 6 (37:29):
Really interesting question, though, Jeff, because it's really just seven words, right.
I also think about death a lot, but it could
mean so many things, like was he actually looking around
at some of his environment thinking that he could be
next was he just thinking, you know, more sort of
existentially about death When I was in high school, in
(37:50):
middle school, I used to think about death also, but
I used to think about it like in the context
of what is death like, like what exactly comes after death?
And is that what he was doing or was he
thinking more about more sort of immediate death or was
it this sort of inner turmoil in him starting to
really brew up.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
I just think it's interesting he was a kid who,
on the one hand knew he was going to go
to college and on the other hand, saw everything going
on around him. I just think you couldn't be honestly,
and it's weird to say this. Maybe as a white
Jewish guy from suburban you know, sticks of New York,
I don't think he could be a black kid growing
up in that environment and be one hundred percent certain
that your life is going to be okay and that
(38:31):
you're going to make it out. And I have to
have to think him saying, I also think about death
a lot is because you're seeing a lot of young
people dying around you. In the senior year, he applied
to several universities. One of them answered him right away,
Grambling State University, an HBCU in southwestern Louisiana. It became
(38:51):
his top choice. This is how Reggie describes it in
his book.
Speaker 11 (38:56):
I decided to attend Grambling State because they would first
to accept me. I could have gone to other schools.
GSU was my heart. I had two other uncles who
attended the school, but I was the first in my
immediate family to go to college. A black college like
Gramblink takes no back seats to anyone the neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
Through Reggie party, it was a celebration for us neighborhood.
Speaker 13 (39:27):
We was liked you are like when.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Reggie went to college.
Speaker 10 (39:30):
We all went to.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
College booied by the support of sixty nine village. Reggie
practiced things and made the nineteen hundred mile trek from
East Oakland to Louisiana and Gramlink State University's campus. His
plan was in motion. He was going to study journalism,
work at the campus newspaper, and launched a career in
sports journalism, combining two of his life's loves. The world
(39:54):
was his oyster. It was the heavy start of a
pivotal chapter in his life, filled with the untell actual expansion,
new friendships, love, and career quests. It was also where
the voices began creeping into Reggie's head.
Speaker 6 (40:12):
In the next episode of Finding Sexy, Sweat.
Speaker 11 (40:16):
Me, a little boy from Oakland sitting next to college
football's most winning is the successful coach That, for instance,
is grandly a place where everybody is somebody.
Speaker 12 (40:28):
Him and Reggie almost came to blows in the newsroom
over who can write a better Lead's that's how passionate
we were. Backs. I just wanted a girl, so I
had girl names, but I don't even remember anymore. And
when I had a.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Boy, he was like, oh, I guess I just name
after that.
Speaker 11 (40:49):
So I sat in the rear of the Greyhound, I
felt my head snap. Seems all the stress from the
isolation and embarrassment, not to mention living in a small
trailer and come to an.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Need Finding Sexy Sway is a production of School of
Humans and iHeart Podcasts. This episode was reported, written and
hosted by Jeff Peerolman and Rick Jervis. It was produced
by Gabby Watts with production support from Etily's Perez. Zaron
Burnett is. Our story editor. Jesse Niswanger scored and mixed
this episode. George Washington I read the excerpts from the
(41:23):
Harassment of Reginald D.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Paine.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley, and Brandon Barr.
Please leave the show a review and you can follow
along with the show on Instagram at School of Humans.
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