samhumphries:

davidgeis:

wilwheaton:

deejaybird:

“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. I had a crush on Uhura as a kid. LOL.

I love this picture, I love this woman, I love that Gene took a stand against the network, and I love that Nichelle had the courage to stick around, and inspire a generation of women (of color and otherwise) to believe in themselves.

It’s also well known that she and William Shatner had the first interracial kiss on television.  What I didn’t know, and read the other day, was that they filmed the scene several times with and without the kiss to give to networks for them to decide which one to use… only Nichols and Shatner kept messing up the non-kissing scenes so that they would have to use the kissing one. HEROES.

HEROES