In her role as Lieutenant Uhura, Nichelle Nichols broke with racial stereotypes and made her an icon for equality. The US actress known from "Star Trek" has now died at the age of 89.
Actress Nichelle Nichols, best known for her role as Lieutenant Uhura in the science fiction series "Star Trek", is dead. She died of natural causes on Sunday night at the age of 89 in the US state of New Mexico, shared her family with. She made history not only with one of the first kisses between a black and a white man on US television. While at that time, African Americans were usually seen as domestics or criminals in film and television, the dancer and singer played an equal role in the series.
Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. dissuaded her from considering leaving the series popular on German television as "Spaceship Enterprise" in order to return to the theater. According to The Hollywood Reporter, during a chance encounter, King told her, "You can't do that. Don't you understand that this is the first time we're being seen as we should be seen?"
She also played the role of Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, whose last name means "freedom", in the first six "Star Trek" films. Later, Nichols worked as a recruiter for the US space agency NASA - who approached her after criticizing their lack of diversity.
