• ACTRESS
• Began acting professionally at 14 years old, enjoying a successful theater career before moving to television
• Cast as Lieutenant Uhura in the 1966 Star Trek series (produced by Lucille Ball's studio), becoming the FIRST woman of color to have a leading role on a prime-time TV show
• Participated in the FIRST kiss between a Black and white couple on American television (with William Shatner) in 1968, only a year after the Supreme Court had confirmed that interracial marriage is legal
• After the first season, Nichols had a chance encounter with Martin Luther King Jr. and told him she was considering leaving the show to return to the stage. He urged her to remain because of how symbolic her role was, both in media representation and the message that Black people had an important part to play in humanity's future.
• Both astronaut Mae Jemison and comedian Whoopi Goldberg (who had a recurring role on Star Trek: The Next Generation), have cited the character of Uhura as inspiring them to pursue their dreams
• Became an effective recruiter for NASA, encouraging people of color to enter STEM fields
• Continued acting after the show was cancelled, as well as recorded multiple music albums, wrote a sc-fi trilogy, and has attended countless Star Trek conventions around the world

Photo by Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Bibliography: Harrison, Vashti. Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2017. Print.

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