--- title: Star Trek at 50: Why Martin Luther King Jr. Loved the Show description: The show—which premiered 50 years ago—had an American icon among its list of early fans, and his reason for watching was important canonical: https://time.com/4478354/martin-luther-king-star-trek/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-09-07T16:00:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:04:26.068Z article:section: History og:title: Why Martin Luther King Jr. Loved 'Star Trek' og:description: The show—which premiered 50 years ago—had an American icon among its list of early fans og:url: https://time.com/4478354/martin-luther-king-star-trek/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc7cc91b4ed8af091/6988a4be5f570f71cbb2267a/uhura.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Star Trek: The Original Series og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why Martin Luther King Jr. Loved 'Star Trek' twitter:description: The show—which premiered 50 years ago—had an American icon among its list of early fans twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc7cc91b4ed8af091/6988a4be5f570f71cbb2267a/uhura.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why Martin Luther King Jr. Loved _Star Trek_ > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 5 Things You Didn't Know About 'Star Trek' [Watch (HLS stream): 5 Things You Didn't Know About 'Star Trek'](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/1PAAHe7W.m3u8) (1:27)  _Published 2016-09-07. One of the most popular and influential television shows from the 1960s is the original 'Star Trek' series, here's what you didn't know about it._  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Sep 7, 2016 4:00 PM UTC  Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Uhura and William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk in the STAR TREK episode, "Charlie X." Season 1, episode, 2\. Original air date September 15, 1966. Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Uhura and William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk in the STAR TREK episode, "Charlie X." Season 1, episode, 2\. Original air date September 15, 1966. CBS Photo Archive / Getty Images  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Sep 7, 2016 4:00 PM UTC When the original _Star Trek_ debuted a half-century ago on Sept. 8, 1966, it was to [middling reviews](http://time.com/3269295/star-trek-1966/). But, even though that earliest iteration would only last three seasons, there were some who saw that the show was more than just the average sci-fi adventure. And those prescient fans included one very important person in particular. It’s a story that has since become legend within _Star Trek_ circles: after the first season, Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura in the original series, decided to leave the show for a role on Broadway. As she [would later](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSq%5FUIuxba8) recall, creator Gene Roddenberry asked her to think about the decision over the weekend before officially quitting. That very weekend, she was at a fundraiser when one of the staffers told her that her “biggest fan” was “desperate” to meet her. She graciously agreed to say hello to the fan. That fan was none other than Martin Luther King Jr. _Star Trek_ was, he said, the only show he allowed his children to stay up late to watch. When she told him that she was planning to leave the show, he told her that she just couldn’t: though African-Americans were making great strides toward equality, she represented one of the only examples of that equality on American television. Uhura was intelligent and beautiful and commanding and, he pointed out, a role that wasn’t specifically the role for a black woman. Her presence on that space ship showed the world that a black woman could be all of those things. Nichols, of course, decided to stay on the show. That special _Star Trek_ quality was very intentional: the show’s creator Gene Roddenberry specifically envisioned a better future in which the strife that marked the real world had been overcome. “The show had an idealistic, ’60s counterculture mind-set, imagining a 23rd-century world in which humans had outgrown war and prejudice,” as Richard Zoglin explained in the[ recent TIME special edition](http://time.com/4406710/star-trek-history-excerpt/) about the show. [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](http://time.com/newsletter) As Roddenberry [put it](https://books.google.com/books?id=whd6CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=%E2%80%9CIntolerance+in+the+23rd+century?+Improbable!%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=tnt3stNxNW&sig=pcf3APiT3DtkwVJL8hBEodYMGOQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjeuenuiPfOAhXLRSYKHXtUBaIQ6AEIJDAB#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CIntolerance%20in%20the%2023rd%20century%3F%20Improbable!%E2%80%9D&f=false) in the 1968 book _The Making of Star Trek:_ --- > “” --- It’s a tradition that continued with the latest iteration, the movie _Star Trek Beyond_. “The whole point of any _Star Trek_ exercise,” [wrote](http://time.com/4413135/star-trek-beyond-review/) TIME’s critic Stephanie Zacharek, “is that people of different temperaments, beliefs and skin tones must learn to work together.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4478354/martin-luther-king-star-trek/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4478354/martin-luther-king-star-trek/"},"headline":"Why Martin Luther King Jr. Loved Star Trek","datePublished":"2016-09-07T16:00:05.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:04:26.068Z","description":"The show—which premiered 50 years ago—had an American icon among its list of early fans","url":"https://time.com/4478354/martin-luther-king-star-trek/","keywords":["Television","Civil Rights"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc7cc91b4ed8af091/6988a4be5f570f71cbb2267a/uhura.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc7cc91b4ed8af091/6988a4be5f570f71cbb2267a/uhura.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Star Trek: The Original Series","caption":"Star Trek: The Original Series","creditText":"CBS Photo Archive / Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4478354/martin-luther-king-star-trek/","name":"Why Martin Luther King Jr. Loved Star Trek"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"5 Things You Didn't Know About 'Star Trek'","description":"One of the most popular and influential television shows from the 1960s is the original 'Star Trek' series, here's what you didn't know about it.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/1PAAHe7W/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2016-09-07T20:41:16.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/1PAAHe7W.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4478354/martin-luther-king-star-trek/","duration":"PT1M27S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4478354/martin-luther-king-star-trek/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```