Nichelle Nichols obituary
msn.comUS’s first small-screen kiss between a black woman and a white man, Uhura and Captain Kirk (played by William Shatner), in 1968.
When Nichols considered leaving Star Trek at the end of the first run, a chance meeting with the civil rights leader Martin Luther King at a fundraising event changed her mind. “He said I had the first non-stereotypical role, I had a role with honour, dignity and intelligence,” she recalled in a 2011 television programme. “He said: ‘You simply cannot abdicate.
This is an important role. This is why we are marching. We never thought we’d see this on TV. ’”Returning to the part that she had seen simply as a stepping stone to Broadway, Nichols took it more seriously and reprised it in the original Star Trek’s spin-off films.
She saw Uhura – her name was based on uhuru, the Swahili for “freedom” – not only as a role model for black people, but also for women with ambitions to become astronauts or scientists.
Read more on msn.com
