I don’t recall where I bought this book. I suspect it was second hand at one of the mini-conventions I attend from time to time. I’ve got some really good books at these places. Sometimes it’s people selling off parts of their collection, other times it’s authors selling copies of their own books. When I bought it I knew it would be a gem, it’s nice to know I wasn’t wrong.
Nichelle Nichols was born in 1932. Her family were of mixed heritage, with her white grandfather marrying a Black woman and leaving his family despite their money. Her grandfather started the town of Robbins in Chicago, and her parents survived a run-in with the Capone family while Nichols was still in utero. Her grandfather wanted to have a family based on love rather than social convention. This ability to survive and thrive despite the social mores of the day were instilled into Nichols.
One of the things Nichols has learned is how to tell a good story. Her background, including her grandparents and parents is engagingly told. So much so, that I regret never having met these people, they must have been wonderful people.
In the pages of this book we see some iconic people, not just stars in Hollywood, but stars in real life and I’ll come back to some of that in due course. Nichols was the first Black actor to have a position in a TV series that mattered. Yes, the series mattered, but also her role was a big one and the affect she and her role had around the world is still reverberating to this day.
After some singing and dancing roles, Nichols ended up in Star Trek. She played Lieutenant Uhura, the always cool and collected polyglot. This was a non-menial role, the first to star a Black actor. And as a Lieutenant she should have sat in the Captain’s chair on occasion, the fact that she didn’t shows the racism inherent in the studio. One of the things this book highlights is how little she knew of what was going on behind the scenes. Apparently Gene Roddenberry was constantly writing better scripts for her, but the studio (faceless people) were interfering and making him reduce her role, again and again. She only found out about most of this later on.
At one stage she wanted to resign because of the racism. She’d just discovered how much fan mail she’d actually been getting as opposed to what was being delivered to her. At that point she met a very big fan. She was at a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) fund-raising event. This fan turned out to be Martin Luther King who told her how important she was to this role. ‘This is not a Black role, and this is not a female role, You have the first nonstereotypical role on television, male or female.’ These words were what made her stay on in Star Trek, from one of the most influential Blacks in American history.
One of the roles she took on after Star Trek was to help find more minority and female personnel for NASA. As with everything she did she was successful. We see how much difference she made to the NASA hiring program. She helped recruit Dr. Sally Ride and Colonel Guion Bluford. She helped change the American space program from white males to more diversity. Essentially, if you’re not a white male you couldn’t see yourself in the space program. She changed that.
Nichols changed much more than that and if you want to read it in her own words I suggest you find the book somewhere. It’s well worth the read. Beautifully written with lovely details to match. She name drops perfectly, not for the name, but for who they were and what they did in the world. I loved this book, I can’t say much more than that.