Obama’s love for Nichelle Nichols

Actress and singer, Nichelle Nichols, famous for her role of communications officer Lieutenant Uhura aboard the USS Enterprise in the Star Trek television series, recently visited the White House and President Obama admitted, as a young man, he had a crush on her.

Nichelle Nichols visited the White House in February, and yesterday she Tweeted a picture of President Obama and herself giving the Vulcan salute. The Tweet said: “Months ago Pres Obama was quoted as saying that he’d had a crush on me when he was younger. I asked about that and he proudly confirmed it! – President Obama also confirmed for me that he was definitely a Trekker! How wonderful is that?!”

Miss Nichols was the first African-American woman to have a featured part in a one-hour drama with a role as an equal, not as a stereotyped domestic worker.

She also planted the first inter-racial kiss on American TV, when she kissed Captain James Kirk (William Shatner) in the 1968 episode “Plato’s Stepchildren.”

The versatile Nichelle Nichols

Before she turned to acting, Miss Nichols toured the United States, Canada and Europe as a singer with the Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton bands. On the West Coast, she appeared in The Roar of the Greasepaint—the Smell of the Crowd, For My People, and won high praise for her performance in the James Baldwin play, Blues for Mister Charlie. Prior to being cast as Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek, Nichols was a guest actress on television producer Gene Roddenberry’s first series The Lieutenant.

Former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison has cited Nichols’s role of Lieutenant Uhura as her inspiration for wanting to become an astronaut and Whoopi Goldberg has also spoken of Nichols’s influence. Goldberg asked for a role on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the character of Guinan was specially created, while Jemison appeared in an episode of the series.

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