Nichelle Nichols, Uhura in ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 89

variety.com:

Carmel Dagan Staff WriterNichelle Nichols, who portrayed chief communications officer Lt. Uhura on the original “Star Trek” series, sharing with William Shatner one of the first interracial kisses in television history, died in Silver City, N.M.

She was 89 years old.Nichols’ death was confirmed by Gilbert Bell, her talent manager and business partner of 15 years.That interracial kiss was a courageous move on the part of Nichols, Shatner, “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and NBC considering the climate at the time, but the episode “Plato’s Stepchildren,” which aired in 1968, was written to give all involved an out: Uhura and Captain Kirk did not choose to kiss but were instead made to do so involuntarily by aliens with the ability to control the movements of humans.

Nevertheless, it was a landmark moment. There had been a couple of white/Asian kisses on American television and even one white/African-American kiss before, a year earlier on “Movin’ With Nancy” in which Sammy Davis Jr.

kissed Nancy Sinatra on the cheek in what appeared to be a spontaneous gesture but was in fact carefully planned. The Uhura-Kirk kiss was likely the first white/African-American lip-to-lip kiss.But Uhura, whose name comes from a Swahili word meaning “freedom,” was important beyond the interracial kiss: A capable officer who could man other stations on the bridge when the need arose, she was one of the first female African-American characters in a nonmenial role on television.