Nichelle Nichols, the "Lieutenant Uhura" of the Enterprise spacecraft from "Star Trek" is dead. The actress, who was one of the first African-American women to land a starring role in a TV series, was 89 years old and suffering from heart problems. He lived in Silver City, New Mexico.

Nichelle thought she had to play the part of Uhura for just one season but Martin Luther King himself had convinced her to stay because it was a real revolution in the years of civil rights marches to have a black woman not featured on TV in a subordinate role.

Uhura, which means "freedom" in Swahili, was a highly trained ship's officer, precisely the fourth-in-command on the Enterprise.

Nichelle Nichols is remembered not only for being the first actress to show her navel on TV but also because in a November 1968 episode, during the show's third season and a year after the historic Virginia vs. Loving who had legalized marriages between people of different races, she and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) had been forced to embrace by the inhabitants of a strange planet and the following kiss is considered the first interracial in the annals of television.

(Unioneonline / ss)