 Visiting luminaries like Mary McLeod Bethune, Ethel Waters, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers lectured and sang at the Lyric.The Lyric continued to operate as a movie theater until 1959 when it became a church of the General Assembly of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith.When Overtown began to deteriorate in the 1960s the Lyric Theater closed and would remain shuttered for decades.