Star Trek icon Nichelle Nichols dead at 89

The actress died on July 30 at the age of 89. Kyle Johnson said his mother had died of natural causes. Her death was confirmed by Gilbert Bell, her talent manager and business partner. A mild stroke in 2015 and a diagnosis of dementia in 2018? After that, she didn't appear in public.

A year ago, we wrote about a new documentary called Woman in Motion, which was directed by Todd Thompson and tells the story of a woman who was recruited by NASA.

She got her first job as a ballerina at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago when she was 14 years old. After touring the US, Canada, and Europe, she settled in LA to pursue acting.

The Lieutenant was a short-lived series that was produced by Gene Roddenberry. The episode dealt with racial prejudice. Roddenberry thought of her for one of the roles in the new series. The show became Star Trek. She revealed in her book that she had an affair with Roddenberry before he met his wife.

I shall have more to say about the trailblazing, incomparable Nichelle Nichols, who shared the bridge with us as Lt. Uhura of the USS Enterprise, and who passed today at age 89. For today, my heart is heavy, my eyes shining like the stars you now rest among, my dearest friend.

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) July 31, 2022

After the first season, she was frustrated with her role and almost quit the show. She met Martin Luther King Jr. She recalled him telling her she couldn't leave the series. We will be seen as intelligent, quality, beautiful people, who can sing, dance, and can go to space, who are professors, lawyers, for the first time on television. If you leave, he can fill it with anyone, even an alien, because your role is not a black one and it is not a female one.

The first interracial kiss on US scripted television was engaged in by Nichols and Shatner in the 1968 episode "Plato's Stepchildren." Cyrus Farivar was a writer for Ars.

The smooching scene has been commonly referred to as television’s first interracial kiss—but there’s compelling evidence that it actually wasn’t. Still, this bisou remains an iconic Star Trek moment at a time in America when there were very few mainstream media depictions of mixed-race intimacy. After all, "Plato's Stepchildren" aired just 18 months after the Supreme Court decided the case of Loving v. Virginia, which overturned all bans on interracial marriage in the United States.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the scene in "Plato's Stepchildren" was shot one way with the actors' lips meeting (as the show's creator, Gene Roddenberry, wrote it) and another where they don’t. However, actors William Shatner (Kirk) and Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) both flubbed the non-kiss takes so that the director (who was concerned about possible backlash) would be forced to use the real McCoy.

The director of science from NASA spoke at the 1975 Star Trek convention. He liked Uhura a lot. She spoke about her love of space and NASA, as well as her sense of being left out. When NASA said it couldn't find qualified black people, Nichols insisted that they weren't applying to the program because they didn't think NASA was serious about giving them a chance. She became a NASA spokesman through her company.

Woman in Motion.">

Women and minorities were recruited to the shuttle program. Only 35 of NASA's aspiring recruits were minorities when she started. By the time she submitted her final report, there were 1,649 women and 1000 minorities in a group of 8000.

Sally Ride and Judith Resnick, the first and second American women in space, were among those who joined the program. Col. Frederick D. Gregory served on three shuttle missions and became NASA deputy administrator.

The crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger were all from the same area. Everyone on board the shuttle was killed when it broke up 73 seconds after launch. She had become close to Resnick and was devastated by the loss.

Kyle Johnson asked for privacy for the family as they dealt with their loss. Her light will remain for us and future generations to enjoy, learn from, and draw inspiration, he wrote. Hers was a model for all of us.