Constructed in 1925 as a live performance venue, the Brown Theatre was converted into a movie theatre in 1930 in response to the economic realities of the Great Depression. Through the 1950s, it operated as a first-run movie theatre but, like other theatres along Fourth Street, did not admit African Americans. As part of a campaign for an open accommodations law, the NAACP Youth Council, joined by the adult NAACP and white members of the Unitarians for Social Action, picketed outside the Brown during a 1959 screening of Porgy and Bess. The Brown was later among the Fourth Street theatres targeted during the 1961 "Nothing New for Easter" business boycott. Like neighboring businesses, it fully integrated after the passage of the Public Accommodations Ordinance of 1963. Today it hosts diverse performances and regional audiences, and in 2013 it hosted a ceremony marking the fiftieth anniversary of that ordinance.