'Star Trek's' Nichelle Nichols Dies at 89
by EG
Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura on the 1960s TV series Star Trek, has died at the age of 89. Nichols' role has long been hailed as revolutionary, as she was one of the first Black women on TV to have a role that put her in a position of authority. Nichols reportedly dies of natural causes in New Mexico. Read on for details.
Nichelle Nichols, who made history and earned the admiration of Martin Luther King Jr. for her portrayal of communications officer Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek, has died. She was 89.
Nichols, who earlier sang and danced as a performer with Duke Ellington’s orchestra, died Saturday night of natural causes, her son, Kyle Johnson, posted on her official Facebook page.
“Her light however, like the ancient galaxies now being seen for the first time, will remain for us and future generations to enjoy, learn from, and draw inspiration,” he wrote Sunday. “Hers was a life well lived and as such a model for us all.” (Read tribute to the late actress here.)
A family spokesman told The Hollywood Reporter that she died in Silver City, New Mexico. She had been living with her son and was recently hospitalized.
Nichols played a person of authority on television at a time when most Black women were portraying servants.
She was cast as Uhura by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry after she guest-starred as the fiancee of a Black U.S. Marine who is a victim of racism in a 1964 episode of another NBC show he created, the Camp Pendleton-set The Lieutenant.
(Leonard Nimoy and Ricardo Montalban, two other Star Trek actors, appeared on that short-lived Roddenberry series as well.)
In the 2010 documentary Trek Nation, Nichols said she informed Roddenberry midway through Star Trek’s first season of 1966-67 that she wanted to quit the show and return to the musical theater, which she called “her first love.”
However, a chance meeting with King at an NAACP fundraiser — who knew he was a Trekker? — led Nichols to stay put.
“He told me that Star Trek was one of the only shows that his wife Coretta and he would allow their little children to stay up and watch,” she recalled. “I thanked him and I told him I was leaving the show. All the smile came off his face and he said, ‘You can’t do that. Don’t you understand, for the first time, we’re seen as we should be seen? You don’t have a Black role. You have an equal role.’
“I went back to work on Monday morning and went to Gene’s office and told him what had happened over the weekend. And he said, ‘Welcome home. We have a lot of work to do.’ ”
Said Roddenberry in the documentary, “I was pleased that in those days, when you couldn’t even get Blacks on television, that I not only had a Black but a Black woman and a Black officer.”
Het the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.