Nichelle Nichols - First Major Black Female TV Role And First Interracial Kiss On 'Star Trek'

Nichelle Nichols' life has moved at the kind of warp speed her "Star Trek" character Lt. Nyota Uhura took for granted.  When television writer and producer Gene Roddenberry's "Star Trek" science fiction series debuted on NBC in 1966, the Civil Rights Movement -- under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- was in high gear, fighting the injustices of racial segregation, black economic oppression and discrimination and racial violence against African Americans.  And when Nichols landed the role of communications officer Uhura on the Starship Enterprise, she had no idea that this was a breakthrough role for black women.

"It didn't hit me at the time until somebody told me," she told The Huffington Post. "I splashed onto the TV screen at a propitious historical moment. Black people were marching all over the South. Dr. King was leading people to freedom, and here I was, in the 23rd century, fourth in command of the Enterprise."

Nichols vividly recalls how America reacted when her Uhura character first hit the television airwaves.

"Oh, man, there were parts of the South that wouldn't show 'Star Trek' because this was an African American woman in a powerful position, and she wasn't a maid or tap dancer."

While shooting "Star Trek" episodes in the late 1960s, Nichols didn't feel any discrimination on the set, but felt it in other parts of the studio, especially where she wasn't allowed to enter the studio through a particular gate where the other actors could go through.

"That's right. There were instances where I was turned away from entering the studio at the walk-on gate, and I had to go all the way around to the front gate, sign-in and come back. A guard on the set told me I had no right being there -- that they had replaced a blue-eyed blonde with me," she remembered. "I went through crap, man. Racism was alive and rampant there. Some people said I wasn't good enough, saying things like, 'I don't know how you got this role.' And they kept waiting for me to complain and raise hell about it, but I decided to ignore it. I never went to Gene [Roddenberry] about it."

Unhappy with how things were going with the show, and feeling tugged to hit the Broadway stage in New York, Nichols told Roddenberry she was leaving "Star Trek" at the end of the first season. He asked her to think about it over the weekend, during which she attended a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People fundraiser that resulted in a life-changing close encounter for her.

"When I turned around, I was looking into the face of Dr. Martin Luther King, walking toward me with a big smile on his face," she said about the civil rights leader, who confessed to being a "Trekkie" and her biggest fan. When Nichols informed King that she was leaving "Star Trek," he adamantly urged her to stay. "He said, 'Don't you realize how important your presence, your character is? This is not a black role or a female role. You have the first nonstereotypical role on television. You have broken ground.'"

"He added, 'Here we are marching, and there you are projecting where we're going. You cannot leave [the show]. Don't you understand what you mean?' I told him that when I would go on hiatus from the show, I could come and march with him and he said, 'No! You're an image for us. We look on that screen and we know where we're going.' It was like he was saying, 'Free at last, free at last!'"

Nichols stayed with "Star Trek," and it's a good thing she did -- otherwise she may not have had a chance to make history again by being part of the very first televised interracial kiss, with Capt. Kirk, no less.