Star Trek~ Happy 81st birthday, Lieutenant Uhura!!
Last edited Thu Jan 2, 2014, 10:48 PM - Edit history (1)
Miss R•EVOLutionaries shared ConScare's photo.
December 29, 2013
By ConScare
"Happy 81st birthday, Lieut. Uhura!! The Star Trek character played by Nichelle Nichols broke racial barriers on TV, and when she thought of quitting the series at one point, none other than Martin Luther King, Jr., encouraged her to stay on! "He said I had the first nonstereotypical role, I had a role with honor, dignity and intelligence. He said, 'You simply cannot abdicate, this is an important role. This is why we are marching. We never thought we'd see this on TV.'" - Ms. Magazine
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Today I would like to honor and celebrate a woman who has made her mark on television, space travel, and equal rights, Nichelle Nichols. Best known for her role as Lt. Uhura on the original Star Trek series, Nichols has parlayed that initial cult status and eventual superstardom into a platform for making the world a better place for everyone–a true champion for social justice. She started her career in the brief lifespan of Oscar Brown, Jr.‘s civil rights musical Kicks & Co. Although the stage was her first love, she accepted an early television role from Gene Roddenberry. When he was casting Star Trek, he insisted on adding her to the cast as the communications officer.
As an equal officer on the command deck, Uhura was unprecedented: an African-American lead character who was not a servant. Nevertheless, feeling that the character was not as fully developed as her peers, Nichols planned to leave after the first season to return to Broadway. As she later recounted, she was encouraged to remain at the program when a fan of the show approached her at an NAACP function where she was speaking. That fan was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. When she told him of her plans, he replied,
STOP! You cannot! You cannot leave this show! Do you not understand what you are doing?! You are the first non-stereotypical role in television…Nichelle, for the first time, not only our little children and people can look on and see themselves, but people who don’t look like us, people who don’t look like us, from all over the world, for the first time, the first time on television, they can see us, as we should be! As intelligent, brilliant, people! People in roles other than slick tap dancers, and maids, which are all wonderful in their own ways, but for the first time we have a woman, a WOMAN, who represents us and not in menial jobs, and you PROVE it.
Remaining on the series, she went on to be part of the first-ever scripted mixed-race kiss on television when Uhura and Captain Kirk were forced to kiss by telekinetic aliens. After the series was cancelled, she realized she had been bitten by the space bug. Along with her continued support of the NAACP, Nichols reached out to NASA. She participated in a number of their civilian programs and became a spokesman for the agency. She had started a company to further women’s rights, Women In Motion, and agreed to use that company to help recruit women and people of color to NASA. Her efforts were very successful, helping bring in such luminaries as Sally Ride and Charles Bolden, the first permanent African-American NASA Director.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/10/1063564/-Black-History-and-Star-Trek#
Sally Ride...
My heart aches right now. Sally was one of my first and biggest achievements. She once thanked me for my recruitment efforts while under contract to NASA, saying "If it hadn't been for you I might not be here."
Sally carved out her own place in history as the first American woman in space, but she was much more than that. She was a symbol for all of the little girls that needed to see what was achievable if you worked hard and studied hard. Sally was a physicist and had a love for the Sciences - a field of study that we should all encourage young people to follow.
Many people have said that I was their inspiration, something that fills my heart with joy every time that I hear it. When NASA asked me to help them find the first qualified women and minorities to join the then all-male-all-white astronaut corp, I did so with great enthusiasm.
One of the first that my company Women In Motion was able to reach was a beautiful, young, brilliant woman named Sally Ride. She not only joined the astronaut corps - she revolutionized it by blazing the trail that so many female astronauts followed.
She became MY inspiration to continue to search to find the next Sally Ride, or Dr. Mae Jemison. I know that right now, there's a little Sally or Mae out there, reading about what Sally achieved in her life, and deciding that Mars sounds like a great place to visit........
http://www.uhura.com/
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The Vulcan Sign!
She may have been #4 in the command line on paper, but Uhura never was actually given the conn in the original series, nor in any of the movies. Sulu was given the conn several times, and I recall one episode ("Journey To Babel"
where Chekov was told to "take over" while Kirk went to sickbay....but never Uhura. She was given the conn in one animated episode, but other than that, she never got to sit in the big chair.
Hey, the tv people and Roddenberry went back-and-forth over this thing about six million times. Remember in the pilot, "Number One" was Majel Barrett's character, and Spock was next in rank. No way they were going to let that stand in 1968.
I don't see in TOS that there was every any distinct chain-of-command. In any event, we rarely saw anyone keeping watch; some crisis or other had always brought the captain to the bridge regardless of who may have been watch officer at the time. A priori, it would make more sense for Sulu to be next-in-line, as he was (apparently) chief navigation officer (or weapons, both are command-track positions), whereas Uhura was, after all, communications which is not a command track position. But Roddenberry either wasn't aware of, or did not care about, actual naval practices in setting ranks and positions for his characters. It made no sense at all for Sulu to be a lowly lieutenant given his important position.
That having been said, in "Mirror, Mirror" Uhura is clearly Sulu's superior, because she orders him back to his post when he hits on her after Kirk and Spock leave the bridge.
-- Mal
Many happy returns! 
who wasn't a maid or a hooker - aw I loved her and she is STILL so exquisite 
congrats to Ms. Howard
Bravo 
