Star Trek actor wanted to quit but Martin Luther King told her she couldn’t

As Lieutenant Uhura, the translator and communications officer on the Starship Enterprise, Nichelle Nichols was destined to boldly go where almost no man, or woman, had gone before. Not only did the Star Trek actors travel through galaxies to befriend alien species, she also had an on-screen kiss with Captain James T Kirk, played by William Shatner; it may not have been the first interracial kiss on TV, but it remains among the most famous.

In the episode Plato’s Stepchildren, first broadcast in November 1968 during the original show’s third and final season, Kirk and Uhura are forced into their kiss by a bored, telekinetic race. Shatner claimed in Star Trek Memories (1993) that their lips never touched, though Nichols insisted it was genuine, adding that their lips touched in all 36 takes.

Despite fears of a racial backlash, especially from viewers in the American south, Nichols recalled that the episode generated a positive response. ‘‘We received one of the largest batches of fan mail ever, all of it very positive, with many addressed to me from girls wondering how it felt to kiss Captain Kirk, and many to him from guys wondering the same thing about me. However, almost no-one found the kiss offensive,’’ she wrote.

Yet Nichols, who has died aged 89, almost left the show long before that kiss. Star Trek had begun in 1966, but after the first series she handed in her resignation, saying she wanted to return to the theatre. A few days later she was at an event organised by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, where a special guest wanted to meet her. It was Martin Luther King Jr, who told her she had ‘‘created a character of dignity and grace and beauty and intelligence’’.

‘‘When I told Dr King I was thinking of leaving the show, the smile ran away from his face. He said, ‘You cannot do this. And you will not. And you may not – you simply must not. Don’t you realise that not only for our own little black children but for people who don’t look like us, for the first time they will see us as equals’.’’ Nichols returned to the studio and withdrew her resignation.

Whoopi Goldberg, who appeared as the bartender Guinan in Star Trek: the Next Generation and Star Trek: Picard, was one who was pleased she did. ‘‘When I was nine years old Star Trek came on,’’ Goldberg recalled. ‘‘I looked at it and I went screaming through the house: ‘Come here . . . everybody, come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid.’ ’’

Uhura, whose name means ‘‘freedom’’ in Swahili, was fourth in command on the Enterprise. The character was not only highly educated and well trained but also

‘‘Come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid.’’ Whoopi Goldberg on first seeing Nichelle Nichols in Star Trek

maintained a cool, calm and professional demeanour. It was probably the first time a character of African descent featured as an equal to her Caucasian counterparts on American TV.

At the time Nichols was opposed to her country’s adventures in space. ‘‘I figured the money could be better used to clean up ghettos and to fight disease and poverty,’’ she said. However, if the space programme was going to happen, she wanted to see greater diversity. ‘‘Where are my people?’’ she demanded of Nasa in a moving speech in 1977.

Grace Dell Nichols was born in Robbins, an integrated community near Chicago. She was the daughter of Samuel Earl, a factory worker, and his wife Lishia, a well-read woman whose hopes of entering law school were never realised. Her paternal grandfather had been a white southerner who alienated his wealthy parents by marrying a black woman.

As a child Nichols tired of being called Gracie and asked her mother for a different name. Lishia’s first thought was Michelle, but she settled on Nichelle because of its alliterative qualities. Both parents had children from previous marriages and Nichelle grew up in a large household. Her younger brother, Thomas, was among 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult in California, which in 1997 took part in a mass suicide coinciding with the closest approach of the Hale-Bopp comet.

In 1951 she married Foster Johnson, a tap dancer, but the union ended after four months. Before Star Trek was cast she had an affair with Gene Roddenberry, the show’s creator, who included her in his 1964 TV series The Lieutenant. In 1968 she married Duke Mondy, a songwriter and arranger. That was dissolved after four years and she is survived by a son from her first marriage.

As Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, might have said, Nichols went on to ‘‘live long and prosper’’. She often insisted that Star Trek represented how the future could be, ‘‘a future that is beyond the petty squabbles we are dealing with here on Earth’’, she said. ‘‘We are able to devote ourselves to the betterment of all humankind by doing what we do so well: explore. This kind of a future isn’t impossible – and we need to all rethink our priorities to really bring that vision to life.’’ – The Times