Nichelle Nichols' Friends and Family Band Together to Carry on Her Legacy
Nichelle Nichols hoped to inspire people to greater heights.
JANUARY 4, 2023 - Star Trek fans knew Lieutenant Uhura's character to be driven, dedicated, cool under pressure, highly educated, fiercely loyal, and well-trained. As we later learned, Uhura’s character was a mirror of the actress that brought her to life, Nichelle Nichols.
Nichols was an advocate of civil rights, pushing the boundaries of what women can do, and what people of color can achieve, and displayed with grace and dignity what a role model was. Young girls (and boys too) of all races watched her on the bridge of the Federation flagship, the USS Enterprise, and somehow, they knew that they too could be an important voice in society.
But the work of Ms. Nichols did not end with Star Trek. She became a spokeswoman for NASA, and in 1977, she contracted as a representative and speaker to help recruit female and minority candidates for spaceflight training. And she fulfilled that role with her usual tenacity and charm, to the degree that the following year, the next class of astronaut candidates included women and members of minority groups. She also inspired the next generation of celebrity champions to likewise work alongside her and further the work she’d begun.
Actress Whoopi Goldberg, who later starred in Star Trek: The Next Generation, remarked in a recent interview, “Nichelle was the first Black person I’d ever seen who made it to the future. She was head of communications. This show and this woman was a beacon that said yes, we’ll be there. And it just made me feel like that was an amazing thing, and she helped propel other women to go into space.”
Sadly, we lost this beautiful person in 2022, yet we take a small comfort in knowing that a portion of Nichelle Nichols’s ashes is headed out to deep space aboard the Celestis Enterprise Flight alongside many of her Star Trek colleagues. Her legacy will continue to eternally soar through the cosmos, and now her family and friends are acting to carry on her legacy here on Earth, as well.
According to TrekMovie.com, the newly-formed Nichelle Nichols Foundation will “partner with existing organizations that have a proven track record of outreach, scholarships, training, and mentorship to increase women and diversity in STEAM education.” The hope is that the Foundation will carry her message to inspire future generations of young people of diverse backgrounds to pursue their dreams, with their first project being the Nichelle Nichols Space Camp. The camp is set to open in 2024 in Huntsville, Alabama.
If you would like to learn more about this remarkable woman and contribute to the foundation named after her, click here NichelleNicholsFoundation .
Thaddeus Tuffentsamer is an internationally selling author. His books have been sold in the US, the UK, Sweden, Germany, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Italy, and France. He has a series of young reader novels, a satirical self-help book, (which, according to reviews, actually has some pretty solid counsel), and has joined the list of professional Sherlock Holmes authors.
He promises that his works will never contain profanity, gratuitous violence, or anything else that would prevent the entire family from enjoying them together.
He spends his days working in healthcare administration and in his evenings, in between plans for becoming “Lord Emperor of everything,” he types away at his keyboard letting his imagination out for the world to read.
He is fortunate to have a wonderful wife and two beautiful daughters. He currently lives in Goodyear Arizona with his wife.
