Nichelle
Nichelle Nichols passed away a few days ago. She was eighty-nine years old, and died of natural causes. Her death is sad, but it’s not a tragedy. She lived a full life. And while her name may be unfamiliar to many, she was a ground-breaking actor. She helped to shape our world.
Today’s story starts when I was nine years old, about to turn ten, in 1966. There was a new series debuting on television. Back in those days we lived in Dayton, Ohio, and television consisted of two stations – WLW-D (channel 2) and WHIO (channel 7). WLW-D was “Dad’s Station”, he was the manager, and it was an NBC affiliate. Thursday, September 8th, was the beginning of a program that would literally change the world. It did so much, that in one variation of another, it’s still running today, fifty-five years later. It was called Star Trek.
While the characters in the show “…boldly go where no man has gone before”, the show itself was breaking ground in our own society. From the very beginning, one of the lines crossed by Star Trek, was that of racial, ethnic and gender stereotypes. Sure the Captain, James T. Kirk, was a traditional white male. But his first officer, Spock, was an alien with a slightly green skin tone. And his communications officer was a Black woman.
Uhura
Her name was Uhura (it means freedom) and while she actually had a first name, Nyota, though we never heard it. The rest of the command crew: Sulu (Oriental), Chekov (Russian, at the height of the Cold War), McCoy (a Southern white man) and Scotty (no surprise, Scotsman) were widely diverse for 1960’s programming.
Nichelle Nichols played Uhura, a highly proficient communications officer, capable of communicating with the far corners of the galaxy through her technical prowess. And she was the “model” of a Star Fleet Officer. She was calm in a crisis, professional in her actions, and loyal to her fellow officers. She had that unique characteristic of grace under pressure.
How important was her character? She was one of the first Black women with a consistent role in a national series that wasn’t traditional or subservient. Uhura didn’t “cook, wash or cleanup” on the Starship Enterprise. She was an equal co-member of the crew, the first Black woman to have a critical position, week after week, journeying through the stars.
It wasn’t where Nichols saw her career going. She was planning to leave the show and move onto Broadway. But then a Star Trek fan (known even then as a Trekkie), had a private conversation with her.
Do you understand what God has given you? You have the first important non-traditional, non-stereotypical role. You cannot abdicate your position. You are changing the minds of people across the world, because for the first time, through you, we see ourselves and see what we can be”.
That “Trekkie” was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Nichols stayed with the show, and the following movies, until the first generation of Star Trek actors ended with Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country in 1991. Their mission turned out to be twenty-seven years long.
The Franchise
The Star Trek franchise introduced us to alien captains, female security officers, Black, Oriental, Gay and even multi-gendered characters. But the push for inclusiveness started with Nichelle Nichols. And it wan’t just because of her renowned interracial kiss with Captain Kirk on national television (they were forced to do it by evil aliens). It was, and is, the common theme of the franchise. Race gender, and all of the other stereotypes really don’t matter. That any person can take any role, and competently lead us into the galaxy, on a five (or fifty-five) year mission.
There have been thirteen full length motion pictures, eight television series, three cartoon series, and well over fifty games, from video to a Star Trek Monopoly. The show is so integrated into our society, that the race to create a Covid vaccine was actually called “Operation Warp Speed”. And the newly created sixth branch of the US Armed Forces, the SPACE FORCE, has a Star Trek symbol as their emblem. I’m not kidding, really, take a look.
I hope they don’t play the theme music as you drive on base – but they might!!
Learning from the Bridge
When the original television show ended and before the first series of movies began, Ms. Nichols sang with Duke Ellington and other big bands. She always served as a recruiter for NASA, the real Space Program, helping to make the Agency more diverse.
Sure, I’m a Trekkie, an original from September 8th, 1966, just six days before my tenth birthday. I stayed true through the original series (and reruns) and The Next Generation all the way into the mid-1990’s. While I got lost for a bit, somewhere between Deep Space Nine and Voyager, I did come back for all of the new movies, and the newer series: Enterprise, some of Discovery, and all of Picard (available on Paramount right now).
And I still remember learning from Uhura on the bridge of the Enterprise, back in the sixties, as she had a conversation with Abraham Lincoln (that’s a whole other story).
LINCOLN: What a charming negress. Oh, forgive me, my dear. I know in my time some used that term as a description of property.
UHURA: But why should I object to that term, sir? You see, in our century we’ve learned not to fear words.
KIRK: May I present our communications officer, Lieutenant Uhura.
LINCOLN: The foolishness of my century had me apologizing where no offense was given.
KIRK: We’ve learned to be delighted with what we are. The Vulcans learned that centuries before we did.
Nichelle Nichols died this weekend. She was a force for change, in the twenty-fourth century she portrayed. But more importantly, her efforts changed our own twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She will be missed.