The actress Nichelle Nicholsknown for having played Nyota Uhura in the famous science fiction series “Star Trek”, passed away Saturday night at 89 years oldas announced this Sunday by his son, Kyle Johnson, on Facebook.
“I am sorry to inform you that a great light from heaven no longer shines for us as it has for so many years. Last night my mother, Nichelle Nichols, succumbed to natural causes and died“, he wrote. The message was accompanied by a photo of the star Nichols has on the Hollywood Walk of Famein Los Angeles, and on which a bouquet of roses was seen.
Born in 1932 as Grace Dell Nichols near Chicago, she decided to change her name by Nichelle Nichols when she was a teenager. She was the granddaughter of a white southern man who broke with his family by marrying a black woman. Nichols was performing in venues at the age of 14 thanks to her vocal gifts. And she had a vocal range of four octaves. During this period he met Duke Ellington, who later took her on tour. In the early 1960s she left Chicago after years of club and theater work to move to Los Angeles.
Key in breaking the racial barriers of television
Nichols He was a key person in the world of acting. The helped break down racial barriers on television thanks to the role of Uhurasince it showed an Afro-American woman in a position of authority.
As the same actress pointed out on ‘NPR’ in 2011, in the series “I was projecting into the 23rd century what should have been quite simple.” “We’re on a starship. I was the head of communications. Fourth in command on a starship. They didn’t see this as being, oh, it doesn’t happen until the 23rd century. Young people and adults saw it as now “.
Nichols’s character was fourth in command on a starship
Nichols also shared with actor William Shatner (the Captain Kirk) one of the first kisses of an interracial couple on American television. They did it in the episode “Plato’s Stepchildren”, broadcast in the year 1968, in the midst of the battle for the civil rights of African Americans in the United States.
The words of Martin Luther King Jr
The actress intended to leave the series after the first season, because she wanted to work on Broadway. As she herself revealed in several interviews, she was the reverend and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. who made him change his mind. He told her that her role in the “Star Trek” series was showing children and women in the African-American community in the US that they could have the same rights as whites. and, therefore, he had to continue acting and giving life to Nyota Uhura.
An example for future generations
On more than one occasion the actress Whoopi Goldberg explained that when she was a child watching “Star Trek” she used to yell at her family, “Come on, come on quickly.There’s a black woman on TV and she’s not a maid!”. In this way, she revealed the influence and importance that Nichols had on her.
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