July 31 1968

[sheshe2]

Link to tweet

I was was 15. It was a start.

This wasn't just peanuts.

[Budi]

1. Love you Sheshe2

Thanks Charlie Brown & Franklin, you showed people how to do it.

[rickyhall]

2. We'd already been watching a black female lieutenant on the bridge of the Enterprise for 2 years.

[sheshe2]

3. She wanted to quit.

Guess who asked her to stay.

Nichols was tempted to leave the series, because she wanted to pursue a Broadway career; however, a conversation with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. changed her mind. She has said that King personally encouraged her to stay on the series, telling her that he was a big fan of Star Trek. He said she "could not give up" because she was playing a vital role model for Black children and young women across the country, as well as for other children who would see Blacks appearing as equals, going so far as to favorably compare her work on the series to the marches of the ongoing Civil Rights

snip

That weekend, Nichols attended a banquet that was being run by the NAACP, where she was informed that a fan really wanted to meet her.[16]

I thought it was a Trekkie, and so I said, 'Sure.' I looked across the room and who ever the fan was had to wait because there was Dr. Martin Luther King walking towards me with this big grin on his face. He reached out to me and said, 'Yes, Ms. Nichols, I am your greatest fan.' He said that Star Trek was the only show that he, and his wife Coretta, would allow their three little children to stay up and watch. [She told King about her plans to leave the series because she wanted to take a role that was tied to Broadway.] I never got to tell him why, because he said, 'you cannot, you cannot...for the first time on television, we will be seen as we should be seen every day, as intelligent, quality, beautiful, people who can sing dance, and can go to space, who are professors, lawyers.“ Dr. King Jr went further stating “If you leave, that door can be closed because your role is not a black role, and is not a female role, he can fill it with anybody even an alien”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichelle_Nichols

[TomSlick]

4. I didn't know that story

Thanks.

[sheshe2]

5. that and she went on to serve at NASA.

After the cancellation of Star Trek, Nichols volunteered her time in a special project with NASA to recruit minority and female personnel for the space agency.[5] She began this work by making an affiliation between NASA and a company which she helped to run, Women in Motion.

The program was a success. Among those recruited were Dr. Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut, and United States Air Force Colonel Guion Bluford, the first African-American astronaut, as well as Dr. Judith Resnik and Dr. Ronald McNair, who both flew successful missions during the Space Shuttle program before their deaths in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986. Recruits also included Charles Bolden, the former NASA administrator and veteran of four shuttle missions, Frederick D. Gregory, former deputy administrator and a veteran of three shuttle missions and Lori Garver, former deputy administrator. An enthusiastic advocate of space exploration, Nichols has served since the mid-1980s on the board of governors of the National Space Society, a nonprofit, educational space advocacy organization founded by Dr. Wernher von Braun.[30]

In late 2015, Nichols flew aboard NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) Boeing 747SP, which analyzed the atmospheres of Mars and Saturn on an eight-hour, high-altitude mission. She was also a special guest at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, on July 17, 1976, to view the Viking 1 soft landing on Mars. Along with the other cast members from the original Star Trek series, she attended the christening of the first space shuttle, Enterprise, at the North American Rockwell assembly facility in Palmdale, California. On July 14, 2010, she toured the space shuttle simulator and Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center.[34]

Nichols' work with NASA is given significant focus in the documentary Woman in Motion about her life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichelle_Nichols#Work_with_NASA

You are so welcome.She is amazing.

[TomSlick]

6. Yeah, I didn't know that either.

It's a good day in which you learn something interesting.

[sheshe2]

8. I posted an Op about her here several years ago.

Amazing woman.

[czarjak]

13. Yet, still, nothing is ever good enough. By design too.

[Tomconroy]

7. I still read Peanuts every day.

[bahboo]

9. wow...and just happening to be watching CNN's History of the Sitcom episode...

based on race. Very eye opening...good stuff...

[George II]

10. I was 20 and no joke - I remember that cartoon. Iconic. If only we could go back to the 1960s.

[sheshe2]

11. I don't remember it.

However I remember the 60's.

[The Jungle 1]

12. How come the black kid has lines. Joke

I worked as a supervisor in a union machine shop for a while.
One day one of my African American workers pointed to the graphic on the machine that showed a guy getting caught in the machine.
He says to me how come it is always the black guy getting hurt.

My last name is White. We were at a company picnic and he loudly says hi Whitey. His family was shocked. Mine had heard it before.