Nichelle Nichols on meeting Martin Luther King jr.
We’re used to seeing Star Trek as a charming cultural artifact. But what it meant to people at the time it aired was incalculable. It was mind-blowing. A black woman in the command crew. A Russian officer serving on the bridge in the midst of the Cold War. This wasn’t just science fiction imagining the technology and science and worlds. This was science fiction telling us that humanity had a future together—that for all the world was being torn apart around us and the spectre of the end of the world hung over our heads on a plausible, daily basis, we would survive, grow stronger and find peace with one another, and the best qualities of humans would prevail.
