"Originally published in 1974,  Organization & Spontaneity was a response to key contradictions of the late 1960s and early 1970s Black freedom movement, and an organizational critique of the Black Panther Party and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Kimathi Mohammed deserves to be recognized as among the most original political theorists of the Black Power movement in the United States. In contrast to many political thinkers of the Civil Rights and Black Power era, his work emphasized the self-organization of ordinary African Americans and their liberating, self-directed activism.

Mohammed placed forward his critique of would-be Black vanguards at a time when most prominent Black Power activists