"I told Gene after the end of the first season that I would not be returning to the show — that I wanted to return to my first love, which is musical theatre, but I didn’t know that meeting a Star Trek fan would change my life. I was told a fan wanted to meet me, and I turned and looked into the face of Dr. Martin Luther King — I was breathless. He said, "Yes, I'm the Trekker — I'm a Star Trek fan." And he told me that Star Trek was one of the only shows that his wife Coretta and he would allow their little children to stay up and watch. I thanked him — and I told him I was leaving the show. All the smile came off his face and he said: "You can’t do that." He said "Don’t you understand that for the first time, we’re seen as we should be seen? You don’t have a Black role — you have an equal role." And on I went back to work on Monday morning. I went to Gene’s office and told him what had happened over the weekend. And he said, "Welcome home. We have a lot of work to do.""
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Singers from the United StatesWomen singersAfrican AmericansWomen born in the 1930sActresses from Chicago
Original Language: English
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Sources
Interviewed on Trek Nation (2010); also quoted in "Nichelle Nichols, Lieutenant Uhura on ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 89" by Mike Barnes, Hollywood Reporter (31 July 2022)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nichelle_Nichols
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Nichelle Nichols
Nichelle Nichols (28 December 1932 – 30 July 2022) was an American actress, singer and voice artist.
3 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Nichelle Nichols →
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