Black Representation Matters: Nichelle Nichols, Whoopi Goldberg, Lupita Nyong'o And Leslie Jones
There was a time when the woman who portrayed Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) was thinking about leaving the USS Enterprise, but Martin Luther King Jr. — a huge Trekkie himself — managed to change her mind. Nichols’s portrayal of Uhura marked the first time American television viewers got to see a black, female character who wasn’t a stereotype. But after the first season of “Star Trek,” Nichols decided it was time to leave the show and pursue the career she thought she really wanted, as a Broadway singer. “I was offered a role on Broadway,” she wrote. “I was a singer on stage long before I was an actress, and Broadway was always a dream to me. I was ready to leave Star Trek and pursue what I’d always wanted to do.
“Dr. Martin Luther King, quite some time after I’d first met him, approached me and said something along the lines of ‘Nichelle, whether you like it or not, you have become an symbol. If you leave, they can replace you with a blonde haired white girl, and it will be like you were never there. What you’ve accomplished, for all of us, will only be real if you stay.’ That got me thinking about how it would look for fans of color around the country if they saw me leave. I saw that this was bigger than just me.”
“When Star Trek came on, I was 9 years old. And I saw this show and there you were and I ran through the house saying, “Hey! Come everybody! Quick! Quick! Look! There’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid! I knew from that moment that I could become anything I wanted to be.” "She was gorgeous and was in charge of communication and was the first person to let America realise that we were in fact, in the future because of prior to the folk of no colour anywhere, on any planet, anybody`s head... "- Whoopi Goldberg
"I've heard people talk about images in popular culture changing, and that makes me feel great, because it means that the little girl I was, once upon a time, has an image to instill in her that she is beautiful, that she is worthy — that she can, until I saw people who looked like me, doing the things I wanted to, I wasn't so sure it was a possibility. Seeing Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah in The Color Purple, it dawned on me: 'Oh — I could be an actress!' We plant the seed of possibility."-Lupita Nyong'o
"When I was young, my dad always let me listen to comedy album . I always knew about comedy, I always loved comedy," she recalled. "The day that I saw Whoopi Goldberg on television, I cried so hard, because I kept looking at my daddy going, 'Oh my god. there's somebody on TV that looks like me! She looks like me! Yay! I can be on TV! I can be on TV! I can do it! Look at her look at her! she looks just like me."
"I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart," she said. "Because now I know what I'm doing that when I put on that Ghostbusters suit, and little girls see me on TV now, now they're gonna go, I can do it. You gave that to me, and I love you...and I love you for what you've done for black women, I love you for what you've done for black comedians, and I love you."-Leslie Jones
More beautiful black representations.
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