Nichelle Nichols, avant-garde Black actress who first played Nyota Uhura in Star Trek: The Original Series, passed away on Saturday night, her son announced on Facebook. She is 89 years old.
“Last night, my mother, Nichelle Nichols, succumbed to natural causes and passed away,” her son Kyle Johnson wrote Sunday. “However, her light, like those of ancient galaxies now being seen for the first time, will remain for us and future generations to enjoy, learn from and draw inspiration from.”
When Star Trek premiered in 1966, Nichols was one of the few Black women to star in a major television series, garnering a fan base not only of Trekkies but also civil rights activists. However, she admitted that Martin Luther King Jr had to resort to Martin Luther King Jr’s pleas to stop her from leaving the show after the first season to pursue a Broadway career.
“He asked me what I was talking about and told me I couldn’t leave the show,” she said The Wall Street Journal in 2011. “We talked for a long time about what it all meant and what the images on television told us about ourselves.”
He told Nichols that Star Trek is the only show that he and his wife keep their children awake, because it shows that Negroes “like us should be seen every day, are smart, quality, beautiful people who can sing and dance.” and can go into space, who is the professor, the lawyer”.
“If you leave, that door can close because your role is not a black role, and not a female role, he can fill it with anyone even an alien. ,” he told her.
Nichols moved on and embraced her iconic roles, which included one of the first on-screen interracial kisses. She has appeared at conferences throughout the years and cooperation with NASA to help recruit female astronauts. She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1992, and Zoe Saldana later reprized her famous role in the 2009 remake of Star Trek series.
During a conservatorship hearing in 2018, documents showed that Nichols had been dementia. She later withdrew from public appearances a year later.
“She had a good life and was a role model to all of us,” her son wrote.
