It’s a somber day for Star Trek fans as the iconic Nichelle Nichols — best known for her role as Lt. Nyota Uhura in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek: The Original Series — passed away at age 89 on Sunday. Nichols’ son Kyle Johnson revealed the sad news on her Facebook page.
“Her light, however, like the ancient galaxies now being seen for the first time, will remain for us and future generations to enjoy, learn from, and draw inspiration,” Johnson wrote. “Hers was a life well lived and as such a model for us all.”
During part of the Civil Rights era in 1966, Nichols’ role as a Black woman featured prominently in a popular television series like Star Trek was groundbreaking. Though, famously, she told Roddenberry that she wanted to quit her role at Lt. Uhura after the first season and go back to pursuing a career on Broadway. If she followed through, Nichols even had a job offer on the table.
But that was before she met a famous “Trekkie” at an NAACP fundraiser in 1967 — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In a twist of fate, Dr. King urged Nichols to continue playing Uhura because he saw her representation as a Black woman as incredibly vital and influential.
More from a Wall Street Journal interview in 2011:
“He (Dr. King) told me that Star Trek was one of the only shows that his wife Coretta and he would allow their little children to stay up and watch,” Nichols recalled. “I thanked him, and I told him I was leaving the show. All the smile came off his face, and he said, ‘You can’t do that. Don’t you understand, for the first time, we’re seen as we should be seen? You don’t have a Black role. You have an equal role.’
“I went back to work on Monday morning and went to Gene’s office and told him what had happened over the weekend. And he said, ‘Welcome home. We have a lot of work to do.'”
Nichols played Uhura on the show, in countless films, and in various other appearances for much of her life. She recently made a voice cameo as the character on Nickelodeon’s 2022 animated series Star Trek: Prodigy.
From 1977-2015, given her significant role as Lt. Uhura, NASA worked with Nichols to help recruit more diverse astronauts, especially women and minorities. NASA’s first female launch director, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, had this to say about Nichols’ influence on her in a December 2021 interview with Space:
“What I love about Nichelle Nichols is how she embraced the role,” Blackwell-Thompson said in the video, “and how she portrayed us and gave us that roadmap for the future generation of women to follow. We definitely need more characters like Uhura today.”