American actress Nichelle Nichols, who played the character Nyota Uhura in the television series and subsequent film saga “Star Trek” (in Portuguese, “Star Trek”), has died. The actress was 89 years old.
The news broke on the actress’s own official Facebook account. In a note signed by the son of Nichelle Nichols, Kyle Johnson, and published this Sunday afternoon (mainland Portugal time), it reads:
Last night, my mother, Nichelle Nichols, succumbed to natural causes and passed away. However, the light from it, like that of the ancient galaxies seen for the first time today, will remain with us and future generations for us to appreciate, learn from and be inspired by.”
Born in the small town of Robbins, on the outskirts of Chicago, Nichelle Nichols began working in theater as an actress and in music as a singer, having toured Europe and Canada (as well as the United States) accompanying ensembles led by the historic composer, pianist and bandleader Duke Ellington, and multi-instrumentalist Lionel Hampton.
In addition to theater and music, Nichelle Nichols also worked as a model and in the field of dance. But she was on television, with the series “Star Trek”, where she rose to fame.
Nichols’ portrayal of the character Nyota Uhura had particularly significant relevance in the United States. In the series, the actress played the role of a communications officer specializing in linguistics, cryptography, and philology, at a time when almost all black American actors were reserved for the roles of butlers, cooks, and similar menial characters. She would even have the status of “Lieutenant Uhura” in the series.
For a generation of black Americans who were born during the 1950s and grew up in the 1960s, the character of the actress was particularly shocking, reports The Washington Post. Actress Whoopi Goldberg, for example, has said in the past that when she watched “Star Trek” as a teenager, she used to yell at home, “Come quickly, come quickly. There is a black woman on TV and she is not a servant!”
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The character Nichols played in “Star Trek” had another particularly famous admirer. According to the actress herself, it was Martin Luther King, Jr. – leader of the movement for racial equality and civil rights in the US – to persuade her not to abandon her role, when Nichols was considering choosing a career in Broadway.
Luther King will have seen in the character the ability to inspire the black American population to believe in better living conditions (initially, working) and to fight for them, but also the potential to inspire a good part of the white population of the country to review its perception of black Americans.
The character played by Nichelle Nichols in the science fiction series was also named as the first to star in a kiss between two people of different skin color on American television. Although there are actually earlier examples, the moment, with actor James T. Kirk, was historically and symbolically important, especially because of the popularity that the science fiction saga would later gain, when it went from television to cinema. It was not, however, immediately at the time, because, says The Washington Post, the television series was not a “blockbuster” at the time and this had already been seen in more popular Hollywood productions.
After participating in “Star Trek”, the actress would also appear in television productions such as “The Young and the Restless” and in films such as “Canine Heritage”.
Source: Observadora
