Nichelle Nichols

When I was six years old, I remembered Nichelle Nichols appearing on our family television set as the young communications officer aboard the Starship Enterprise, NCC-1701. This was around the same time that I remember a grainy black and white image of Neil Armstrong stepping out of the Lunar Lander, wearing the bulky lunar space suit, and uttering the famous words, “One small step for a man. One giant leap for mankind.” I wondered, at six, why they didn’t talk about womankind because Uhuru was on a spaceship, too, establishing first contact with the aliens even as everyone else was being thrown around the bridge by the alien photon torpedoes. Why wasn’t Uhura considered important enough to be included in that odd little spacewalk?