Nichols (left) with Leonard Nimoy in a scene from an episode of Star Trek - The Original Series
EVER since the late '60s, an often-repeated story is that the civil rights activist Dr Martin Luther King Jr had an instrumental role in persuading the late Nichelle Nichols to remain on Star Trek instead of resigning from the main cast of the series to do a Broadway play.
Is this true?
VERDICT:
TRUE
In a 2019 interview by the Television Industry Foundation, Nichols – who passed away on July 30 - said that King had come up to her at a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) fundraiser, describing himself as "her biggest fan".
Nichols added that she initially expected to see a young Star Trek fan, who would have to wait because King was walking up to him, until he revealed that it was in fact he and his family who were her fans.
She said that King told her that "as a matter of fact, this is the only show that my wife Coretta (Scott King) and I will allow our little children to watch, to stay up and watch because it's on past their bedtime. We admire you greatly, you know?"
Nichols had played communications officer Nyota Uhura on the original Star Trek series in the 60s and subsequent movies.
She broke new ground in film history in 1968 with one of the first interracial kisses on US television – an embrace shared with the Enterprise's Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner.
Nichols then said that King persuaded her to stay when she told him that she was leaving Star Trek and related what he said;
"Don't you understand what this man (show’s creator Gene Roddenberry) is achieving? For the first time on television, we will be seen as we should be seen every day.
"As intelligent, quality, beautiful people who can sing, dance and go into space. (People) who can be lawyers, who can be teachers, who can be professors.
"You don't see it on television – until now."
Nichols added that she could say nothing, realising that every word King was saying was the truth.
"At that moment, the world tilted for me and I knew then what I didn't want to know because I was going to go through turmoil for the rest of the weekend; that I was something else, that the world was not the same," said Nichols.
"That's all I could think of, Dr King and everything he had said. The world sees us for the first time as we should be seen," she added.
Nichols then said that on the following Monday, she told Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry what had happened and that she would be staying with the cast.
"My life has never been the same since, and I've never looked back. I've never regretted it because I understood the universe had somehow put me there and we have choices – are we going to walk down this road or are we going to walk down the other, and it was the right road for me," she added.
References:
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzygziT11I
