Notorious playboy Captain James T. Kirk shared not only the first prime-time interracial kiss but the first televised interracial kiss in American history with Lieutenant Uhura. Given his history of bopping alien babes at every planet they beamed down to, it seems by today’s standards like kissing a black chick would be ho hum. It was actually quite controversial at the time and they had to be being mind-controlled by powerful alien telepaths who love Plato to do it. Both actor William Shatner and actress Nichelle Nichols were bombarded with mail after this. Most was positive, but the content of the Plato’s Stepchildren episode was considered an explosive thing to have done on the show.
She nearly quit the show prior to the kiss. She felt that the studio was treating her in a racist manner by withholding her fan mail and other things they would not do to the white actors. Martin Luther King Jr. personally persuading her to stay on Star Trek because he felt that her role was instrumental in promoting multiculturalism and a color blind society. Dr. Mae Jemison, the first black female astronaut, says she was inspired by Uhura. Nichelle Nichols was also the first black actor to have handprints in front of Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. The entire crew from ST: TOS is immortalized there.
Uhura means freedom in Swahili.
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