FS says: I deeply love this woman. She was badass.
“Uhura” comes from the Swahili word UHURU meaning “freedom”. Uhura was pretty much the first ever black main character on American television who was not a maid or a domestic servant in 1966. TV network NBC refused to let Nichelle Nichols be a regular, claiming Deep South affiliates would be angered, so Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry hired her as a “day worker,” but still included her in almost every episode. She actually made more money than any of the other actors through this workaround, and it was kept secret from the other actors, but it was still a humiliating second-class status. The network people made life hard for Nichols, constantly trying to pare down her screen time, purposefully dropping racist comments in her presence and even withholding her fan mail from her.This deplorable state of affairs led Nichols to make the decision to quit after the 1st season, but then she happened to meet the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. who pleaded with her to stick with the show because as a Black woman she was portraying the first non-stereotypical role on television.
Relevant to all my interests.
this is an Uhura and Nichelle Nichols appreciation blog. haters out the nearest airlock.
To add to Nichelle Nichols’ BAMF factor, she went on later to make ads for NASA encouraging women and PoCs to work for the space agency. Specifically, she was supposed to get them to be astronauts.
Quoth IMDb: “From the late 1970s until 1987, Nichelle Nichols was employed by NASA and was in charge of astronaut recruits and hopefuls. Most of the recruits that she launched were minority candidates of different races and/or ethnicities, as well as gender, like Guion Bluford (the first African American male astronaut), Sally Ride (the first American female astronaut), Judith A. Resnik (one of the original female astronauts recruited by NASA, who perished during the launch of the Challenger on January 28, 1986), and Ron McNair (another victim of the Challenger disaster). She lived in Houston, Texas during her years as a Johnson Space Center employee.”
I own a Star Trek lunch box and whenever someone else sees it they always smile and say they love the show, but more than half of them point to Uhura and say something to the likes of “Ew.” or “I hate her.” It’s moments like those where I won’t to throw all this information at them and watch as they back down. To me she was the most influential and relate-able character on the show. I just wish that everyone could see that.
I always wanted her and Chapel to have their own episode, focusing on their adventures and being all badass. And then I realized this was made in the 60s and was SOL.
Uhura was awesome.