The actress Nichelle Nicholswho played Lt. Uhara on the television series “Star Trek,” has died at the age of 89, her son posted on his Facebook page on Sunday.
“Last night, my mother, Nichelle Nichols, succumbed to natural causes and passed away“Kyle Johnson, his son, wrote on the official Nichols Facebook page. “Its light, however, like the ancient galaxies seen now for the first time, will remain for us and future generations to enjoy, learn of it and inspire us”, concluded Johnson.
Nichols’s interpretation of the role of Uhura helped break down racial barriers on television by showing an African-American woman in a position of authority. Nichols also shared with actor William Shatner (Captain Kirk) one of the first kisses of an interracial couple from american television.
They did it in the episode “Plato’s Stepchildren”, broadcast in 1968, in the midst of the battle for the civil rights of African Americans in the United States.
Nichols I intended to leave the series after his first season to work on Broadway, as he later recounted in various interviews, but the Reverend and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. made him change his mind.
As he explained, Luther King Jr. told him that his role in the “Star Trek” series was showing the children and women of the African American community in the US that they could have the same rights as white people and, therefore, he had to continue acting and giving life to Nyota Uhura.
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Her presence on television had an influence on other actors such as the African-American Whoopi Goldberg, who has said on several occasions that when she was a child and watched “Star Trek” she used to yell at her family: “Come on, come on quickly. There’s a black woman on the TV and she’s not a maid!”
Following his role in “Star Trek,” Nichols worked as a spokesperson for NASAwhere he sought to inspire a new generation of “intrepid” astronauts with a desire to learn, according to the official website of the actress.