“Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker”: The History of a Phrase

During Amiri Baraka’s sentencing in 1967 for possessing an illegal weapon, Judge Leon Kapp read parts of Baraka’s poem “Black People!” including the line “[t]he magic words are: Up against the wall motherfucker!” This quickly became one of the most powerful phrases of the 1960s: an anarchist group in Manhattan went by the name Up Against the Wall, Motherfuckers, and the slogan was central to the student uprising at Columbia University. This became a form of political blackface in which White radicals claimed they occupied the same position as Black people. Simultaneously, Baraka sought to distance himself from it. Recognizing that African American voters could dominate Newark politics, Baraka constructed a cynical public persona, blaming the riots following the death of Martin Luther King Jr. on “outside agitators.” At that point, the phrase was little more than a bit of radical chic that apolitical bands like the Jefferson Airplane could mouth.