Birmingham campaign

===Campaign impact===
Historian Glenn Eskew wrote that the campaign "led to an awakening to the evils of segregation and a need for reforms in the region."<ref name="p.&nbsp;94"/> According to Eskew, the riots that occurred after the bombing of the Gaston Motel foreshadowed rioting in larger cities later in the 1960s.<ref name="p.&nbsp;94">Garrow, (1989) p.&nbsp;94.</ref> ACMHR vice president Abraham Woods claimed that the rioting in Birmingham set a precedent for the "Burn, baby, burn" mindset, a cry used in later civic unrest in the [[Watts riots]], the [[12th Street riot]]s in Detroit, and other American cities in the 1960s.<ref name="p.&nbsp;437">McWhorter, p.&nbsp;437.</ref> A study of the Watts riots concluded, "The 'rules of the game' in race relations were permanently changed in Birmingham."<ref name="p.&nbsp;437"/>

Wyatt Tee Walker wrote that the Birmingham campaign was "legend" and had become the Civil Rights Movement's most important chapter. It was "the chief watershed of the nonviolent movement in the United States. It marked the maturation of the SCLC as a national force in the civil rights arena of the land that had been dominated by the older and stodgier NAACP."<ref>White and Manis, p.&nbsp;68.</ref>  Walker called the Birmingham campaign and the Selma marches "Siamese twins" joining to "kill segregation&nbsp;... and bury the body".<ref>White and Manis, p.&nbsp;74</ref> Jonathan Bass declared that "King had won a tremendous public relations victory in Birmingham" but also stated pointedly that "it was the citizens of the Magic City, both black and white, and not Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC, that brought about the real transformation of the city."<ref>Bass, p.&nbsp;226.</ref>