Nichelle Nichols, better known as Starship Communications Officer Lieutenant Nyota Uhura Enterprise, died on the 30th of July. She was 89 years old. diversity and inclusion in mainstream screen entertainment.
Like Uhura, Nichelle was a central presence during the original screening of Star Trek on NBC from 1966 to 1969. Until then, black actresses were given servile or auxiliary roles in television and theater. But Nichols, radiating 1960s mod-style professionalism and sex appeal from his chair on the bridge of the Enterprise, opened a channel to Hollywood for stars like Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson and Pam Grier.
Born Grace Dell Nichols on December 28, 1932 in the Chicago suburb of Robbins, Illinois, she modeled and starred in numerous plays during her 20s and 30s, including Blues for Mister Charlie by James Baldwin, before its discovery in Star Trek .
Despite its success in the first season of Star Trek , Nichols felt called to Broadway and resigned to show creator Gene Roddenberry after receiving multiple offers for big stage roles. The following weekend, she was a celebrity guest at an NAACP banquet, where she met the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“In truth, [ Star Trek ] it’s the only show my wife Coretta and I will allow our kids to stay up and watch because it’s past bedtime,” King said, according to Nichols’ recollection of the film. Television Academy Foundation.
“And I had the nerve to say, ‘I’m really going to miss my co-stars,’ and he said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘I’m leaving Star Trek ‘ and he said, ‘You can’t. […] He said, ‘For the first time on television, we will be seen as we are meant to be seen, every day.’”
Nichols withdrew her resignation and continued with the series, culminating in her role in Season 3 Episode 10, “Plato’s Stepchildren”, where she shared a kiss with William Shatner, the first interracial romance portrayed on American television. The scene came a year after a Supreme Court ruling overturned southern states’ laws against inter-race marriage.
Although the show’s first season was canceled in 1969, Nichols remained a uniquely identifiable figure from Star Trek in the coming decades. She is, along with Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei and Walter Koenig, one of seven officers who command the Enterprise from its original three-year mission in the 1960s to six film appearances from 1979 to 1991. .
On Earth, Nichelle Nichols was an ambassador for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration beginning in 1977, specifically to advocate training and assigning women and minority candidates for spaceflight roles. In 2012, NASA credited Nichols with inspiring the careers of Sally Ride (the first American woman in space) and fellow astronauts Ronald McNair, Frederick Gregory, and Judith Resnik.
This article is a translation of the writing by Owen S. Good to the website Polygon.
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