Her son Kyle Johnson said Nichols died Saturday in Silver City, NM “Last night, my mother, Nichelle Nichols, succumbed to natural causes and passed away. Her light, however, like the ancient galaxies we now see for the first time, will remain for us and future generations to enjoy, to learn from and be inspired,” Johnson wrote on his mother’s official Facebook page on Sunday. “Her life was a good life and such a role model for us all.” Her role in the 1966-69 series as Lt. Uhura earned Nichols a lifelong honor with the show’s rabid fans, known as Trekkers and Trekkies. It also won her awards for breaking stereotypes that limited black women to maid roles and included an on-screen interracial kiss with co-star William Shatner that was unheard of at the time. Many actors become stars, but few stars can move a nation. Nichelle Nichols showed us the extraordinary power of black women and paved the way for a better future for all women in media. Thank you, Nichelle. We will miss you. pic.twitter.com/KhUf4YM6pX —@RealLyndaCarter “I will have more to say about the groundbreaking, incomparable Nichelle Nichols, who shared the bridge with us as Lt. Uhura of the USS Enterprise and who passed away today at the age of 89,” George Takei tweeted. “For today, my heart is heavy, my eyes shine like the stars among which you now rest, my dear friend.” Takei played Sulu in the original Star Trek series alongside Nichols. But her impact was felt beyond her immediate co-stars, and many others in the Star Trek world also tweeted their condolences. Celia Rose Gooding, who currently plays Uhura in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, tweeted that Nichols “made room for so many of us. She was the reminder that not only can we reach for the stars, but the Our influence is essential to Forget shaking the table — she built it.” Nichols arrives at a Star Trek 30th anniversary event at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles in October 1996. (Damian Dovarganes/The Associated Press) Like other members of the original cast, Nichols also appeared in six big screen spinoffs beginning in 1979 with Star Trek: The Motion Picture and frequented Star Trek fan conventions. She also served for many years as a NASA recruiter, helping to bring minorities and women into the astronaut corps. Most recently, she had a recurring role on TV’s Heroes, playing the aunt of a young boy with mystical powers. The original Star Trek premiered on NBC on September 8, 1966. Its multicultural, multiracial cast was creator Gene Roddenberry’s message to viewers that in the distant future—the 23rd century—human diversity would be fully accepted. WATCHES | Nichols discusses Star Trek’s legacy with CBC News:
Nichelle Nichols talks about the 50th anniversary of Star Trek on CBC News Network
Nichelle Nichols talks about the 50th anniversary of Star Trek on CBC News Network “I think a lot of people took it to heart … that what was being said on television at the time was a reason to celebrate,” Nichols said in 1992, when a Star Trek exhibit was on view at the Smithsonian Institution. She often recalled how the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a fan of the show and praised her role. She met him at a civil rights rally in 1967, at a time when she had decided not to return for the show’s second season. “When I told him I was going to miss my co-stars and was leaving the show, he got really serious and said, ‘You can’t do this,’” she told The Tulsa (Okla.) World in a 2008 interview. A photo of former U.S. President Barack Obama and Nichols is shown at a Star Trek exhibit in Seattle, Washington, in May 2016. (Elaine Thompson/The Associated Press) “You’ve changed the face of television forever, and as a result, you’ve changed people’s minds,” the civil rights leader told her. “That insight that Dr. King had was a lightning bolt in my life,” Nichols said.
Iconic kiss
During the show’s third season, Nichols’ character and Shatner’s Captain James Kirk shared what was described as the first interracial kiss to air on an American television series. In the episode, Plato’s stepchildren, their characters, who have always maintained a platonic relationship, were forced to kiss by aliens who controlled their actions. “The characters themselves didn’t freak out over a black woman kissing a white man,” National Public Radio television critic Eric Degans told the Associated Press in 2018. “In this utopian future, we’ve solved that issue. We are beyond that. It was a great message to send.” Nichols’ Uhura and Captain James T. Kirk, played by William Shatner, feature in scripted television’s first interracial kiss. (Paramount Studios) Worried about the reaction of southern TV stations, the broadcasters wanted to film a second take of the scene where the kiss happened off-screen. But Nichols said in her book, Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories, that she and Shatner purposely deadlocked to force the original version to be used. Despite the concerns, the episode aired without response. In fact, it received the most “fan mail that Paramount has ever received on Star Trek for an episode,” Nichols said in a 2010 interview with the Archive of American Television.
Controversial conservatism
Born Grace Dell Nichols in Robbins, Ill., Nichols hated being called “Grassie,” which everyone insisted on, she said in the 2010 interview. When she was a teenager, her mother told her she wanted to name her Michelle, but she thought that she should have had solidarity initially like Marilyn Monroe, whom Nichols loved. Hence, “Nichelle.” Nichols worked professionally as a singer and dancer in Chicago at age 14, moved to New York nightclubs and worked for a time with the bands of Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton before coming to Hollywood for her film debut in 1959, Porgy and Bess, the first. of several small film and television roles that led to her Star Trek stardom. Nichols was known to be unafraid to stand up to Shatner on set when others complained that he was stealing scenes and camera time. They later learned that he had a powerful backer in the show’s creator. Nichols and other Star Trek cast members are pictured with the NASA Shuttle Enterprise in Palmdale, California, in September 1976. (NASA/Reuters) In her 1994 book, Beyond Uhura, she said she met Roddenberry when she starred in his show The Lieutenant, and the two had been in a relationship a few years before Star Trek began. The two remained close friends throughout their lives. Nichols was a regular at Star Trek conventions and events in her 80s, but her schedule has been curtailed since 2018 when her son announced he was suffering from advanced dementia. Nichols was placed under guardianship under the control of her son Johnson, who said her mental decline made her unable to manage her affairs or make public appearances. Nichols appears at a convention in New York in June 2003. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images) Some, including Nichols’ managers and her friend, film producer and actress Angelique Fawcett, objected to the conservative agency and sought more access to Nichols and records of Johnson’s financial and other movements on her behalf. Her name was occasionally invoked in court rallies seeking Britney Spears’ release from her own custody agency. But the court was firmly on Johnson’s side, and over Fawcett’s objections he was allowed to move Nichols to New Mexico, where she lived with him in her final years.
