When she was 8 years old, Mae Jemison looked to the world's first astronauts venturing into space and asked: "What happens if the aliens only see these guys and they think that everybody on Earth is a buzz-cut-haired white male?"

Decades later, Jemison would remedy that quandary on her own by becoming the first woman of color to go to space.

The astronaut, entrepreneur, dancer, educator and physician delivered a lecture Tuesday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jemison told the standing-room-only crowd of all ages about the importance of finding their talent, doing their part and having the audacity do what they believed to be right.

"No one could explain to me why women weren't in space," Jemison said. "I was totally surprised that there is any way I could have been the first woman of color in the world to go into space. How could that be, when I know about all the brilliant women who were there before me?"

Jemison also talked about the need for representation on a campus where students are grappling with issues of representation, diversity, inclusion and equity, like many others across the nation.

Jemison said diverse perspectives are important because of the power scientists have to create and shape the world. The same chemicals that propel a firework also propel bullets, she said, and both came from different minds.

"Your perspective makes such a difference," Jemison said.

Jemison recalled her childhood on the South Side of Chicago heading into the 1960s, a decade marked by the momentum of the civil rights movement and the space race. She remembered the riots after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination and the launch of Sputnik.

Jemison developed a passion and awe for science at an early age, fueled by family and even the science fiction show "Star Trek." She spent time looking up at the sky wondering what children on the other side of the world saw.

"Every little kid comes out of the chute excited about the world around them," she said.

Jemison enrolled at Stanford University at 16. She earned degrees in chemical engineering and Afro-American studies before moving to Cornell University for her doctorate in medicine. She's practiced medicine in a Cambodian refugee camp and served as a medical officer in the Peace Corps in West Africa.

Jemison spent nearly eight days aboard the space shuttle Endeavor, in September 1992, logging 126 orbits of Earth in her role as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's first mission specialist, performing experiments in material science, life science and human adaptation to weightlessness.

Jemison said she never questioned her ability to go to space. She said she faced people who doubted her or questioned her intelligence but never let it stop her. She encouraged her listeners to walk through life brazenly to honor King's life.

"When I think of Martin Luther King, I think of attitude and audacity," Jemison said.

Looking back to her childhood fandom, Jemison became the first real astronaut to appear on "Star Trek," in "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

But she also channels her passion for space exploration in real life, as principal of 100 Year Starship, a government-funded nonprofit initiative that seeks to make it possible for humanity to travel beyond our solar system within the next 100 years while improving life on Earth at the same time by being inclusive of ethnicity, geography and disciplines.

And the mission of 100 Year Starship also hits close to home, Jemison said. The challenges humanity will face in traveling to a different star — food, human behavior, speed, time — mirror the challenges of the planet's future.

"It pushes us beyond anything we know how to do," she said.

This is the fourth year UW-Madison has held an observance for Martin Luther King Day. Gabe Javier, the associate vice chancellor for student affairs, identity and inclusion, said Jemison's story shows people that they can be many different things in life. He said the response to her invitation has been strong.

"So many people have come and said, ‘She’s my role model as a person of color in STEM,’" Javier said. "I had friends sending me pictures of their kids' baby books that have Dr. Jemison in them. We have alums saying, ‘I’m flying in to see Dr. Jemison. She’s my role model.’”

The astronaut's speech comes in the wake of a scandal over a student-produced homecoming video that showed next to no students of color. The incident made national headlines and forced conversations about representation at the university.

In her opening remarks, Chancellor Rebecca Blank acknowledged the university still has work to do, a notion Javier reiterated.

“This isn’t the only thing that we do and we can’t pretend to think that an MLK speaker observance is going to ‘fix things,’" he said. "But I think we have to have a diversity of voices and experiences and ways and people to interact, because at the end of the day we want these consistent, meaningful experiences that will help make it a deeper impact.”

Jemison said her advice to students who want to enter science fields is to think about the importance of having a place at the table but also ask: "What do we do with our place at the table?”

When she took her eight-day trip into space, she took items that represented people and organizations that wouldn't have been taken up before: a flag for Spelman College, a historically black university; an item from Alpha Kappa Alpha, a sorority founded by African American students at Howard University; a poster of ballet dancer Judith Jamison performing the dance "Cry;" a statue from the Bundu women's society in Sierra Leone; a certificate for Chicago Public Schools students for doing well in math and science.

She gave three pieces of advice for women and students of color: to know they belong, to not be intimated by people who act like they know more and to not feel the need to be the "best."

"You have every right to be there," she said. "You have every talent and potential. Just know that."

Contact Devi Shastri at 414-224-2193 or DAShastri@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @DeviShastri.