Star Trek's Nichelle Nichols closes hailing frequencies
, has died at the age of 89.
Born in 1932, her four-octave vocal range saw her perform with Duke Ellington at the tender age of 14 and sparked aspirations to become a singer. When the chance to act on TV came up, she saw it as a stepping-stone to an eventual Broadway career.happened. She wasn't the first woman of color on American TV screens, nor even the first in a prominent role. But she was the first who wasn't playing some form of domestic servant.
After a year on the show, Nichols felt she had enjoyed the experience but wanted to move on. Broadway, after all, was calling. No less a personage than Martin Luther King Jr persuaded her not to leave. He felt her presence on the show was crucial to the nascent Civil Rights movement, because it showed that women and African Americans could achieve anything.TV series lasted only three years, the show became a mainstay of syndication and a touchstone of popular culture.
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