Famous ‘Star Trek’ actress Nichelle Nichols has died aged 89. She broke barriers in film and helped NASA recruit women and minorities.

Nichelle Nichols, who broke barriers for Black women in Hollywood when she played communications officer Lieutenant Uhura in the original TV series “Star Trek,” has died aged 89.

Her son, Kyle Johnson, said Nichols passed away Saturday in Silver City, New Mexico.

“Last night, my mother, Nichelle Nichols, succumbed to natural causes and passed away. However, her light, like those of ancient galaxies now seen for the first time, will remain for us and future generations to enjoy, learn from, and draw inspiration from,” said Johnson. write on my official page Facebook Sunday page. “Her life was a good life and a role model for all of us.”

Her role as Lieutenant Uhura in the 1966-69 series earned Nichols a lifelong honorable place with die-hard fans of the series, known as Trekkers and Trekkies. It also earned her plaudits for breaking down stereotypes that limited Black women to playing servants and included an interracial on-screen kiss with co-star William Shatner that she hadn’t yet. heard at the time.

“I will have to say more about the incomparable, pioneering Nichelle Nichols, who shared the bridge with us as Lieutenant Uhura of the USS Enterprise, and who passed away today at the age of 89, “George Takei wrote on Twitter. “For this day, my heart is heavy, my eyes are as bright as the stars that you rest in the middle, my dearest friend.”

Like the other original cast, Nichols also appeared in six big-screen spin-offs starting in 1979 with “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and frequented “Star” fan conventions. Trek”. She also spent many years as a NASA recruiter, helping to bring minorities and women into the crew.

More recently, she had a recurring role on the television series “Heroes”, playing the great-aunt of a boy with mystical powers.

The original “Star Trek” premiered on NBC on September 8, 1966. The multicultural, multiracial cast is creator Gene Roddenberry’s message to viewers that in the distant future – the century 23 – human diversity will be fully accepted.

“I think many people have memorized…that what was said on TV at the time was cause for celebration,” Nichols said in 1992 when a “Star Trek” exhibit was viewed at the Smithsonian Institution.

She often recalled how much Martin Luther King Jr was a fan of the show and praised her performance. She met him at a civil rights meeting in 1967, at which point she decided not to return for the show’s second season.

“When I told him I was going to miss my co-stars and I was leaving the show, he got very serious and said, ‘You can’t do that,'” she said. Tulsa World (Okla.) in a 2008 interview.

“You changed the face of television forever, and so you changed people’s minds,” she said, the civil rights leader told her.

“Dr. King’s foresight was a lightning bolt in my life,” Nichols said.

In the show’s third season, Nichols’ character and Shatner’s Captain James Kirk shared what has been described as the first interracial kiss to air on a US television series. In the episode, “Plato’s Stepchildren”, their characters, who have always maintained a platonic relationship, are forced into marriage by the aliens controlling their actions.

The kiss “suggests that there’s a future where these problems aren’t as big of a deal,” Eric Deggans, a television critic for National Public Radio, told The Associated Press in 2018. “Myself. the characters don’t have to be scared because a black woman is kissing a white man. … In this utopian future, we have solved this problem. We go beyond it. That’s a great message to send. “

Worried about the reaction from Southern broadcasters, the showrunners wanted to shoot a second scene where the kiss took place off-screen. But Nichols said in her book, “Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories” that she and Shatner intentionally misspelled the line to force the use of the original footage.

Despite the concerns, the episode aired without response. In fact, it received “the most fan mail Paramount has ever received on Star Trek for an episode,” Nichols said in a 2010 interview with the Archive of American Television.

Grace is born Dell Nichols of Robbins, Ill., Nichols hates being called “Gracie,” which everyone insists, she said in a 2010 interview. When she was a teenager, her mother told her that she wanted to name her Michelle, but thought she should have alluding initials like Marilyn Monroe, who Nichols loved. Hence, “Nichelle.”

Nichols first became active as a singer and dancer in Chicago at the age of 14, moving to New York nightclubs and working for a time with the band Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton before heading to Hollywood. to star in her 1959 feature film “Porgy and Bess,” the first of several small film and television roles that made her a “Star Trek” star.

Nichols was known for not being afraid to stand in front of Shatner on set when others complained he was stealing camera footage and timing. They later learned that she had a strong backer in the making of the show.

In her 1994 book, “Beyond Uhura,” she said she met Roddenberry while guest-starring on his show “Lieutenant,” and that the two had been romantically involved several years before “Star Trek.” begin. The two remain best friends for life.

Another fan of Nichols and the show was future astronaut Mae Jemison, who became the first black woman in space when she flew aboard the space shuttle Endeavor in 1992.

In an interview with the AP before the flight, Jemison said she watched Nichols on “Star Trek” all the time, adding that she loved the show. Jemison finally met Nichols.

Nichols was a regular at “Star Trek” conventions and events in her ’80s, but her schedule became limited starting in 2018 when her son announced that she She is suffering from advanced amnesia.