Lieutenant Uhura: Boldly gone forth
A haiku in memoriam to Nichelle Nichols
Boldly she went forth,
Antique prejudices cracked
With a single kiss.
Tom Tordillo, 2022
Space: the final frontier? Race in Space, with a certain sort of grace
One generation before Captain James T. Kirk and Helmsman Hikaru Sulu took the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise in 1966, millions of people who looked like William Shatner and George Takei tried to slaughter one another across the Pacific. Star Trek contemplated a universe where such history no longer mattered.
During the 89 years she graced this world, Nichols added wonder, making our dreams more beautiful. Those who knew her personally penned better memorials than mine.
But it’s worth the time to think about the changes wrought during her lifetime, and the connections between her role and some of those transformations.
Black men served with distinction in the U.S. military since the Revolutionary War., even before there was a U.S.A. The first Black admiral in the U.S. Navy was Samuel L. Gravely; he became a commissioned officer in 1944. Black women served too — as spies, scouts, nurses, cooks…and poets. But not as officers on a bridge.
When Star Trek first aired, interracial marriages were illegal in much of America. The state laws prohibiting such marriages were overturned in 1967 when Loving v. Virginia was decided. Many people regarded interracial relations as horrifying. A murderous coup once took place over the very idea.
When Star Trek first aired in 1966, no Black woman had ever been elected to Congress. In 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first. She’s beautiful too.
Today, the Vice President of the United States is a Black woman married to a White man (Harris once famously rebuked America’s first Black president for calling her beautiful). Meanwhile, one of the most extreme conservative/reactionary justices on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, is a Black man married to a White woman (I am not certain anyone ever accused Ginni Thomas of being beautiful).
A majority of Georgians voted for Biden/Harris. Perhaps they saw in Harris a powerful Black woman they could respect. In 2022, Georgians will choose as Senator either a Black minister who preached at a church made famous by Martin Luther King, Jr., and a Black athlete endorsed by a former president who personally profited from discriminating against Black families seeking housing at his apartment complexes in the 1960s and 1970s.
Hopefully, they’ll also choose a Black woman for governor.
Science fiction shares a universe big enough to accommodate this sort of dreaming.
Star Trek had three female characters in its recurring cast: Nurse Chapel (beautiful, usually blond), Yeoman Rand (beautiful, blond), and Lt. Uhura (beautiful, not a blond). All three are stunningly gorgeous. But unlike the two blondes, Nichols was an officer on the bridge. Her function was not to assist the Captain or Chief Medical Officer, but to operate one of the most critical functions of an exploration vessel.
Black women served crucial roles at NASA in the 1960s — but they were ‘hidden figures.’ Lieutenant Uhura was not hidden.
There have always been Black women leaders. They haven’t always been seen. Even when they were right in front of us:
SULU: For honor, Queen, and France! (lunges)
UHURA: Sulu!
SULU: Ah.
UHURA: Sulu, give me that. (referring to the sword Sulu is carrying)
SULU: I’ll protect you, fair maiden.
UHURA: Sorry, neither.
SULU: Foul Richelieu. (distracted by Uhura’s escape, Kirk is able to grab Sulu and Spock does a neck-pinch)Quote from Star Trek, “The Naked Time,” when intoxicated Sulu enters with a sword
She gotcha there, Sulu.
I find this less pithy exchange a bit sharper:
KIRK: At least try cutting him off!
UHURA: Sir, if I could cut him off, don’t you think I -
RILEY [singing]: “I’ll take you home again Kathleen — “
UHURA: Yes, sir. I’ll keep trying.
KIRK: Sorry.Quote from Star Trek, “The Naked Time,” when intoxicated Riley is singing through the intercom after commandeering the Engineering
A Black woman talking back at the Captain of the Enterprise? The kiss might come about a few seasons later, but “The Naked Time” presents Uhura as formidable — one of the handful of crew who do not succumb to the intoxication at all.
If the image of the kiss charged one portion of America’s science fiction community, the image of steady, even professionalism on display, episode after episode, changed others, signaling a ‘crack’ — or causing it — in the system of prejudices America grappled with in the 1960s.
Cracks matter. The rest is up to us.
