Obituary: Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek’s Lt. Uhura

Nichelle Nichols is best-known as Lt. Nyota Ura, the communication officer on the Starship. Enterprise, died July 30. She was 89. These were her groundbreaking performances Star TrekThis was in conjunction with the Civil Rights movement of the United States and helped to set the standard for inclusion and diversity in mainstream entertainment.

Nichols, Uhura’s core presence was during Star Trek’s original run on NBC from 1966 to 1968. Black actresses had largely been given secondary or ancillary roles on TV and theatre. But Nichols, radiating professionalism and 1960s mod-style sex appeal from her chair on the Enterprise’s bridge, opened a channel to Hollywood for stars like Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson, and Pam Grier.

Born Grace Dell Nichols on Dec. 28, 1932 in the Chicago suburb of Robbins, Illinois, she modeled and starred in several stage plays during her 20s and 30s, including James Baldwin’s Blues for Mister CharlieBefore her breakthrough Star Trek.

She is a success despite her failure in Star Trek’s first season, Nichols felt called to Broadway, and tendered her resignation to show creator Gene Roddenberry after receiving several offers for major stage roles. She was invited to a NAACP banquet as a celebrity guest, and met Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“As a matter of fact, [Star Trek] is the only show that my wife Coretta and I will allow our little children to stay up and watch, because it’s on past their bedtime,” King said, according to Nichols’ recollection for the Television Academy Foundation.

“And I got the courage to say, ‘I really am going to miss my co-stars,’ and he said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘I’m leaving Star Trek,’ and he said, ‘You cannot.’ […] He said, ‘For the first time on television, we will be seen as we should 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 depicted on American television. The scene came one year after a Supreme Court decision nullifying Southern states’ laws against marriage between races.

Though the series’ first run was cancelled in 1969, Nichols remained a singularly identifiable Star Trek In the next decades, she will be a major figure. Together with Shatner (Leonard Nimoy), DeForest Kelley and James Doohan as well, George Takei and Walter Koenig she was one of six commanding officers for the Enterprise’s original three-year mission to the 1960s. She also appears in six feature films from 1979 through 1991.

Nichols, who was an Earth ambassador for NASA, began her career in 1977 to promote the assignment and training of female and minority spaceflight candidates. NASA credited Nichols in 2012 for helping to inspire Sally Ride, who was the first American woman astronaut, Frederick Gregory, and Judith Resnik.