Up Against The Wall Motherfuckers - Influence As A Slogan

Influence As A Slogan

The phrase was taken from the poem, "Black People!" by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones): "The magic words are: Up against the wall, mother fucker, this is a stick up!" One of the first appearances of the phrase "Up against the wall Motherfuckers!" as a revolutionary slogan was in April 1968, on a famous piece of graffiti found scrawled in the mathematics department (the building they helped occupy), following the Columbia University protests of 1968. On April 22, 1968, student leader Mark Rudd quoted Baraka in the concluding paragraph of his open letter to Columbia President Grayson Kirk: "I'll use the words of LeRoi Jones, whom I'm sure you don't like a whole lot: 'Up against the wall motherfucker, this is a stick-up!'"

Most of the lyrics for the 1969 song We Can Be Together, by the acid rock band Jefferson Airplane were used virtually word for word on a leaflet written by Motherfucker John Sundstrom, and published as "The Outlaw Page" in the East Village Other. The lyrics read in part, "We are all outlaws in the eyes of America. In order to survive we steal, cheat, lie, forge, fuck, hide, and deal... Everything you say we are, we are... Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker!" The song marked the first use of the word "fuck" on U.S. television, when the group played it uncensored on The Dick Cavett Show on August 19, 1969. This song also helped popularize the phrase as a counterculture rallying cry, over and beyond the immediate impact of the anarchist group.

At various times, the line became popular among several groups that came out of the sixties, from Black Panthers to feminists and even "rednecks." In the 1970s, Texas country singer-songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard adapted the famous phrase for a song he wrote entitled "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother". The phrase was also used as a song title on the album Penance Soiree by The Icarus Line.

The line was famously shouted by Patty Hearst during a bank robbery.