Blogarchiv
Raumfahrt - How Star Trek legend Nichelle Nichols helped shape a diverse future for NASA

11.05.2021

nichelle-nichols

'United Shades' imagines the moment 'Star Trek's' Nichelle Nichols met MLK 01:41

(CNN)Start a conversation about the power of Afrofuturism, and it won't be long before "Star Trek" legend Nichelle Nichols's name is dropped.

As the iconic Lt. Uhura, the actress made television history with her portrayal of a 23rd-century communications officer aboard the "Star Trek" USS Enterprise. It was one of the first times a Black woman was cast in a position of power on TV -- and it was in a science fiction series, no less.
The result was radical, says Atlanta-area comic book creator and game designer Dedren Snead. "Seeing her as a Black woman on the show ... that was ... who was that?" Snead tells W. Kamau Bell on Sunday's "United Shades of America." "It was just, I never saw Black people in fantasy in that sense."
 

A mission from Dr. King

Lt. Uhura may have been a fictional character, but her on-screen authority in a futuristic world held immense influence at a time when Black Americans were fighting for civil rights.
Nichols, who grew up near Chicago and began performing as a teen, had her heart set on Broadway. As the first season drew to a close in 1967, Nichols was ready to move on.
As the story goes, Nichols was at an event when she was told a "Star Trek" fan wanted to meet her. "She's thinking it's going to be this pimply-faced kid," comic book designer Afua Richardson recounts to Bell. "But it turned out to be Martin Luther King Jr. He said, 'Your show is the only show that I will allow my kids to watch.' She eventually told him that she was planning on leaving the show, and he gave a command, and he said, 'No, you cannot leave the show, it is too important.'"
Actress reflects on historic TV kiss
 
 
 
 
King shared with Nichols how her work was impacting generations of Black Americans who were watching her play a non-stereotypical role. Nichols took King's words to heart, staying with "Star Trek" through its end in 1969.
"That was the greatest thing," Nichols told CNN in 2014 of her encounter with the civil rights movement icon. "That was greater than anything else, to be told that by Dr. Martin Luther King, because he was my leader. So I stayed and I never regretted it."

Recruiting for NASA

By choosing to stay, Nichols didn't just remain in an influential part. She set in motion a chain of events that would alter the course of history.
The same year "Star Trek" came to a close in 1969, the United States successfully landed two men on the moon. All eyes were on the future of space flight, but the growing field also had a glaring deficiency.
This is how being a dancer makes you a better astronaut
 
 
 
 
"There were no women, and there were no minorities in the space program -- and that's supposed to represent the whole country?" Nichols told CNN in 2014. She recalled thinking, "Not in this day and age. We just absolutely cannot have that. I can't be a part of that."
Enlisted by NASA in the late 1970s, Nichols set out on a new mission to help recruit women and people of color into the space race. "I am going to bring you so many qualified women and minority astronaut applicants for this position," Nichols has recalled saying, "that if you don't choose one ... everybody in the newspapers across the country will know about it."
Her work helped bring aboard Guion Bluford, the first African American to go into space, and Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly in space. Mae Jemison, the first African American woman in space, also points to Nichols as the source of her inspiration.
"Science is not a boy's game, it's not a girl's game. It's everyone's game. It's about where we are and where we're going," Nichols told CNN. "Space travel benefits us here on Earth. And we ain't stopped yet. There's more exploration to come."
Quelle: CNN
----
Update: 8.06.2021
.

Woman in Motion tells story of how Star Trek’s Uhura changed NASA forever

"If they let me in the door, I will open it so wide that they will see the world."

Actress Nichelle Nichols will forever be remembered for playing Uhura in Star Trek: The Original Series—one of the first Black women to play a prominent role on television—as well as engaging in the first interracial kiss on scripted television in the US. Less known is her equally seminal role as an ambassador for NASA in the 1970s, working tirelessly to bring more diversity to the agency's recruitment efforts. That work is highlighted in Woman in Motion, a new documentary directed by Todd Thompson that is now streaming on Paramount+.

Thompson himself was not a hardcore Star Trek fan growing up, although he had seen most of the movies and was certainly familiar with Nichols' portrayal of Uhura. His producing partners were fans, however, and when they told him about Nichols' contributions to NASA, he decided it was a story that had to be told. Over the course of production, he interviewed dozens of people about how Nichols inspired them and also spent a considerable amount of time with the actress herself, now 88.

"She's the definition of Hollywood royalty for me," Thompson told Ars. "How she carries herself, how she treats others, how she engages with you—she's so incredibly magnetic. What she did was so paramount to giving us a blueprint of where we need to go, how we need to be, if we're going to make any sort of progress here on Earth and beyond the stars. I was very humbled by the responsibility to tell her story and tell it the right way."

Woman in Motion starts out as a fairly standard biopic, exploring Nichols' early days as a dancer and singer. She had wanted to become the first Black ballerina, and by age 14 landed her first gig at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago. She subsequently toured the US, Canada, and Europe with Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton before settling in Los Angeles in 1960 to pursue acting. "Her journey wasn't a straight line," said Thompson. "It was very zig-zaggy, and yet it had a definite direction, unbeknownst to her at the time. All the stars lined up in a very nice way."

Among Nichols' first roles was playing a Black soldier's fiancee on a short-lived series called The Lieutenant, produced by Gene Roddenberry. The episode (which never aired) was entitled "To Set It Right" and dealt explicitly with racial prejudice. So when Roddenberry began developing a new series, originally titled Wagon Train to the Stars, he thought of her for one of the roles. That show became Star Trek, and Nichols made history as Uhura. (In her autobiography, Nichols revealed that she had been romantically involved with Roddenberry before he met his wife, Majel Hudec, although the affair ended well before she was cast in Star Trek.)

Nichols very nearly quit the series after the first season, frustrated with what she perceived to be a constantly diminished role. But a chance encounter with Martin Luther King Jr. changed her mind. "You cannot, you cannot," she recalled him saying when she told him she wanted to leave the series. "For the first time on television, we will be seen as we should be seen every day, as intelligent, quality, beautiful people, who can sing, dance, and can go to space, who are professors, lawyers. If you leave, that door can be closed because your role is not a Black role, and it is not a female role, he can fill it with anybody, even an alien."

After the original series ended, Nichols attended a 1975 Star Trek convention, where NASA's director of science was also speaking. He expressed his admiration for Uhura. She in turn spoke about her love of space and NASA, but also of her sense of disenfranchisement: "I didn't see me" in the modern space program, she recalls in the film. When NASA claimed it couldn't find qualified Black people, Nichols didn't buy it, insisting that Black people and women weren't applying to the program because they didn't believe NASA was serious about giving them a chance. So she became a NASA spokesperson through her company, Women in Motion.

ohura

Nichols spent a whirlwind four months traveling all over the country, trying to recruit women and minorities to the shuttle program. When she started, 100 of NASA's aspiring recruits were women, and just 35 were minorities. By the time she submitted her final report, those numbers had swelled to 1,649 women and 1,000 minorities in a group of 8,000. "That's so Nichelle," said Thompson. "Whatever she puts her mind to, she's going to go after it."

Among those recruits were Sally Ride and Judith Resnick—the first and second American women in space, respectively—as well as Guion Bluford Jr. and Ron McNair, the first and second Black astronauts in space, and Ellison Onizuka, the first Asian American in space. Col. Frederick D. Gregory also heeded the call and wound up serving on three shuttle missions before becoming NASA deputy administrator.

Nichols' story is not without its share of tragedy. McNair, Resnick, and Onizuka were all crew members on the Space Shuttle Challenger for the doomed mission STS-51-L. The shuttle broke up in the air just 73 seconds after launch on January 28, 1986, killing everyone on board. Nichols was devastated by the loss, particularly of Resnick, with whom she had become quite close. In fact, she can't bring herself to talk about it on camera in the documentary, all these years later, briefly breaking down and stopping the interview for a time to regain her composure.

"I think she has a sense of responsibility for that, because she was the one on the road recruiting them and encouraging them to get involved," said Thompson. That loss is offset somewhat by an interview with Resnick's brother, who spoke of how proud he was of Nichols and how she opened the door for his sister to fulfill her dream of being an astronaut, with no regrets. For Thompson, the Challenger disaster serves as a reminder that space exploration carries considerable risks and that those who take on such missions believe the rewards to be gained far outweigh those risks.

Nichols suffered a mild stroke in 2015 and was diagnosed with dementia in 2018. She no longer makes public appearances, so it's wonderful to see her smiling and laughing, engaging the camera with her usual zest and warm humor in Woman in Motion. "We haven't even begun to begin" to realize the future of diversity that Star Trek put forth, she says at the end.

Thompson hopes the documentary will inspire others to follow in her trailblazing footsteps. "I really want people to walk away from this film feeling energized, feeling hopeful, and most importantly, realizing that anyone can make a difference," he said. "We don't have to be TV actresses, astronauts, or scientists. We can just be who we are with a huge conviction to help make the world a better place."

Quelle: arsTechnica

1712 Views
Raumfahrt+Astronomie-Blog von CENAP 0