There are still many tributes to Nichelle Nichols. The groundbreaking actress died of natural causes at the age 89.
She is best known for her role in Lieutenant Nyota Ura’s story “Star Trek”Nichols was a nightclub singer who made her way to Hollywood in the film sequels. One day she serenaded Inside Edition.
Three months after a minor stroke, Nichols invited Inside Edition for an afternoon to discuss her hopes, dreams, and where she had been.
“Even from a little girl I wanted to go to the moon, you know. I wanted to go to the stars,”She said.
Nichols was the first Black woman to appear on prime-time TV in the 1960s. She played Uhura on the popular sci-fi series. She also made history with television’s first interracial kiss with William Shatner.
She went on to work for NASA, recruiting women and people with disabilities.
Not long after spending the day with Inside Edition, she would go on to travel to the edge of space in real life as a passenger on NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA. The flight flew as high as the stratosphere at 50,000 feet above Earth.
“You always wanted to go to the moon and then suddenly someone says, ‘no I’m not kidding the plane leaves,’”She laughed.
“To think that all my dreams were not dreams, they were reality they just (hadn’t) transpired yet,”She said.