Frankie's Blog — Nichelle Nichols

Written by Angela Rairden Although I’ve long been more of a Star Wars fan than a Star Trek fan, there is something undeniably extraordinary about a television show that broke barriers by casting minorities in important roles long before such a thing was the norm. Or, to some, before such a thing was even deemed “acceptable”. And yet, the first, iconic Star Trek series gave us Nichelle Nichols, a Black woman, as Lieutenant Uhura and George Takei, a Japanese man, as Lieutenant Sulu all the way back in 1966. These weren’t secondary characters or the stereotypical portrayals of race that...