How Martin Luther King Kept Lt. Uhura on the Bridge of the Starship Enterprise

Martin Luther King did a great many things during his tragically short life, but for a certain sub-group of people who possess such talents as translating Klingonese his ultimate achievement may have been saving Lt. Uhura from becoming one of the famous Red Shirt Victims. Little do most people know that it was Martin Luther King who was the central figure in keeping the first non-stereotypical black woman on America TV from fading into obscurity.

Let's hop in the Wayback Machine shall we, Mr. Peabody. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek tells NBC executives-historically speaking, not among the brightest people in the world, especially today-that he wants to add a little color to the bridge of the Enterprise. Not being Einsteins in any sense of the world, the brain-damaged children that grew up to be the guys who controlled what you saw on NBC in the late 60s thought Roddenberry was being quite literal and wanted merely to liven up the look of the bridge. Of course, what Roddenberry actually meant was that he wanted to introduce a black character. Making things even worse, that black character would also be a woman. To suggest that the dunderheads running NBC were aghast is to be charitable. So vile were these precursors of the morons who run NBC today that they actually ordered that Nichelle Nichols not be made aware of the fact that the fan letters she received were more than both the living ego himself William Shatner and the man who is perhaps the nicest person in the history of TV, Leonard Nimoy. If I had been Nimoy, I'd have punched Shatner in the fat gut pretty much every week. And Shatner wonders why he wasn't invited to take part in the new Star Trek movie. But that's another story.

Nichelle Nichols was quickly becoming one of the most popular characters on the show and setting herself up as a major player in the Civil Rights Movement simply by virtue of being an inspiration to young black girls as varied as Whoopi Goldberg and first black female astronaut Mae Jemison. And yet, despite all this, Nichols was the only cast member not under contract. The Glenn Becks who were running NBC were hoping against hope that something could be done to get her off the show and as a result she was working on a show by show basis. What the O'Reillys at NBC failed to realize, however, was that Gene Roddenberry had worked the system and as a result Nichols was actually making more money than if she'd been under contract.

Nevertheless, Nichols was unhappy with her treatment on the show and as much as she enjoyed playing Lt. Uhura instead of being a maid or nurse which were pretty much the only roles offered to black women even during the late 60s (Rosetta LeNoire, who played the grandmother on Family Matters, gives a heartbreaking account in the fabulous documentary Scandalize My Name: Stories from the Blacklist about how a producer flatly told her to her face he would never cast her as anything but a maid), she was considering walking away from the bridge of the Starship Enterprise forever after the fist season. At which point Dr. Martin Luther King enters into history once again.

The two had never met, but knew each other well. Every black person in America in the 1960s knew who Martin Luther King was, but what Nichelle Nichols did not know was that King knew who she was. She found out purely through accident when the two Civil Rights icons met at a function. Nichelle Nichols told Dr. King that she was considering leaving the role of Lt. Uhura and explained why. Had King and Nicholls not met, television and movie history may have changed forever. The new Star Trek might not have included an interspecies romantic relationship between Spock and Uhura. Whoopi Goldberg might never have had a recurring role on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Heck, it is even within the realm of possibility that Mae Jemison would not have become the first black female astronaut in space.

Upon hearing that Nicholls was considering walking away from Star Trek, Martin Luther King informed her that he was actually a big fan of the show. He further insisted that she could not leave because she was a groundbreaker. She was opening a door that could never be closed again. More importantly, he reminded her that Lt. Uhura was fourth in command of the Enterprise. A black woman was fourth in command of a spaceship and nobody on the show was having a fit about that fact.

Perhaps because by the 24^th century there will be no more NBC around to hire their never-ending string of idiots.