The story of the original publication of "Sweat" is unusually illuminating of the historical context from which it emerged. It was initially published in November 1926 in the first and only issue of Fire!!, an African-American literary magazine started by a number of luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston was among them, a group that included Langston Hughes, Aaron Douglas, Gwendolyn Bennett, Wallace Thurman, John P. Davis, Richard Bruce Nugent, Lewis Grandison Alexander, and Countee Cullen.
The magazine's project was a provocative and controversial one. It intended to explore frankly and realistically life within the African-American community, and included reference to things like homosexuality, colorism, and prostitution. Wallace Thurman as the editor "was primarily interested in aspects of black life generally considered disreputable... The three short stories featured characters falling far short of standards dear to the bourgeoisie, both black and white" (Johnson and Johnson 80). As one can see in "Sweat," the writers of Fire!! were also unafraid to use the African-American vernacular speech. This was criticized by some leaders and critics as propagating negative stereotypes about black people.
This was described by Langston Hughes in his autobiography, The Big Sea, in a passage entitled "Harlem Literati": “None of the older Negro intellectuals would have anything to do with Fire. Dr. DuBois"—that is, W.E.B. DuBois—"in the Crisis roasted it. The Negro press called it all sorts of bad names… Rean Graves, the critic for the Baltimore Afro-American, began his review by saying: ‘I have just tossed the first issue of Fire into the fire'... So Fire had plenty of cold water thrown on it by the colored critics. The white critics... scarcely noticed it at all" (237).
Ironically, a basement where the bulk of the first issue's copies were being stored burned in a fire, and this was too much of a financial barrier for the magazine to overcome, given that it had originated with limited funds to begin with (Hughes 237). Today, the magazine is considered a valuable artifact, and "Sweat" is considered to be a classic American short story.
