Browne was determined not to accept stereotypical roles which had routinely been offered to African-American actors. He also wanted to do more than act and narrate. In 1966, he wrote and made his directorial stage debut with "A Hand Is On The Gate", starring Cicely Tyson, James Earl Jones, and Moses Gunn. A lifelong bachelor who coveted his privacy in the turbulent decades of the civil rights revolution, Browne avoided participation in public protests, preferring instead to be "more effective on stage with metaphor...than in the streets with an editorial".