Nichelle Nichols on TV's first interracial kiss on 'Star Trek'
Nichelle Nichols who portrayed Lt. Nyota Uhura on the original Star Trek opens up about being on tv during a revolutionary period for African Americans. The...
Nichelle Nichols, who portrayed Lt. Nyota Uhura on the original Star Trek, opens up about being on TV during a revolutionary period for African-Americans. The Huffington Post writes that while shooting Star Trek, Nichols didn’t feel discrimination from her cast-mates, but did feel it from other people, for example, when the guards didn’t allow her to enter the studio through the same gate as the other actors. After wanting to leave the show, Nichols was convinced to stay by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself. This decision would ultimately led to the first on screen interracial kiss.
Nichelle Nichols’ life has moved at the kind of warp speed her “Star Trek” character Lt. Nyota Uhura took for granted.
When television writer and producer Gene Roddenberry’s “Star Trek” science fiction series debuted on NBC in 1966, the Civil Rights Movement — under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — was in high gear, fighting the injustices of racial segregation, black economic oppression and discrimination and racial violence against African Americans.
And when Nichols landed the role of communications officer Uhura on the Starship Enterprise (see dual image below of her then and now), she had no idea that this was a breakthrough role for black women.
Click here to read the rest of this story.
