Entertainment
Nichelle Nichols, trailblazing ‘Star Trek’ actress, dies at 89
Nichols died from pure causes, he mentioned.
Nichols portrayed communications officer Lt. Nyota Uhura within the “Star Trek” TV sequence and plenty of of its movie offshoots.
When “Star Trek” started in 1966, Nichols was a tv rarity: a Black girl in a notable position on a prime-time tv sequence. There had been African-American ladies on TV earlier than, however they typically performed home employees and had small roles; Nichols’ Uhura was an integral a part of the multicultural “Star Trek” crew.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as it “the primary non-stereotypical position portrayed by a Black girl in tv historical past.”
After “Trek’s” three-season run, Nichols devoted herself to the house program. She helped NASA in making the company extra various, serving to to recruit astronauts Sally Experience, Judith Resnik and Guion Bluford, amongst others.
George Takei, who portrayed the USS Enterprise’s helmsman Hikaru Sulu, posted a touching tribute to his co-star.
“We lived lengthy and prospered collectively,” he added with a photograph of the pair making the long-lasting Vulcan salute.
Nichols was born Grace Dell Nichols close to Chicago in 1932. (Sad with Grace, she took the identify Nichelle when she was a youngster.) Her grandfather was a White Southerner who married a Black girl, inflicting a rift in his household.
She moved to Los Angeles within the early ’60s and landed a job in a Gene Roddenberry sequence, “The Lieutenant.” Various “Star Trek” veterans, together with Leonard Nimoy, Walter Koenig and Majel Barrett, additionally labored on the present.
When Roddenberry was creating “Trek,” he remembered Nichols. She was in Europe when she bought the decision.
Uhura wasn’t within the authentic script, and Nichols was answerable for the identify. She was studying a guide referred to as “Uhuru” — “freedom” in Swahili — and urged her character take the identify. Roddenberry thought it was too harsh.
“I mentioned, ‘Nicely, why do not you do an alteration of it, soften the top with an ‘A,’ and it will be Uhura?’ ” she recalled. “He mentioned, ‘That is it, that is your identify! You named it; it is yours.’ ”
Nichols is survived by her son, Kyle Johnson.