Creativity Quote by Barry McGuire

A protest chant condensed into a couplet, this line gets its punch by refusing the comforting myth that public spectacle equals progress. McGuire isn’t dismissing marches; he’s puncturing the idea that integration can be willed into existence by choreography and slogans when the social fabric underneath is still tearing. “Marches alone” lands like a skeptical shrug at performative solidarity, the kind that looks good on the evening news but evaporates at the school board meeting, the rental application, the hiring desk.

The rhyme is doing cultural work. “Integration” is a big, official word - policy, courts, headlines. “Disintegratin’” drags it back to the street: a spoken, clipped ending that sounds like everyday talk, not legislation. That drop from the formal to the colloquial is the subtext: the problem isn’t only in institutions, it’s in people, in “human respect,” the baseline recognition that makes any legal victory livable.

Context matters. Coming out of the mid-60s folk-pop protest ecosystem (with its mix of righteous urgency and media-savvy messaging), McGuire is aiming at a white mainstream audience tempted to treat civil rights as a box to check: endorse the march, congratulate yourself, move on. The line insists integration is not a photo op; it’s a sustained, intimate rewiring of how neighbors see each other. Without that, the country can pass laws and still keep its segregated reflexes - integration on paper, disintegration in practice.