Black History Month (To Boldly Go…)

I’m not a fan of segregating genres of history into specific months.  History’s lessons matter at all times and not a certain month set aside based on your skin color or gender.  Unfortunately, we haven’t fought past this yet.  That means, getting the word out about certain topics/ideas regardless.  So far:

The Last Black Rock Band to Reach #1Rosa Parks’ real story and additional detailsUnrealized Ramifications of Baseball Integration (with stuff on black entrepreneurship)

Today in our Wayback Machine, we head to the middle of the last century when media had a lot of rules about what you could/couldn’t show on TV.  I mean, Elvis was only shown from the chest up because his pelvis was too sexual; no one could actually say Lucy was pregnant on “I Love Lucy”–even though she was *bursting* with being pregnant.  Maryanne on “Gilligan’s Island” and Jeannie on “I Dream of Jeannie” weren’t even permitted to show a belly-button because that would be offensive.  Think that’s bad–it gets sillier.

Toilets aren’t seen on television until the 1970s.  Married couples aren’t shown sharing a bed until the 1970s as well.  They always have separate beds or even separate rooms…and yet, somehow women kept winding up ‘with child’ or ‘in a family way’ (since we can use the p-word).  Go figure.

You get the idea about censorship and the worry of corporations, afraid of offending portions of their viewing audience; this was an era of three networks plus the Public Broadcasting System.  There was no cable superstations or even many independent local channels.

Back in 1968, a radical TV show was in its final season.  That was “Star Trek.”  Really a Western transposed into outer space, the show dealt with a ton of social issues and current events (like Vietnam or even prison reform) in allegories.  From the start though, it pushed boundaries.  The bridge crew wasn’t just white men.  You had an alien (Spock), an Asian (Mr. Sulu), a Russian (Chekov), as well as Lt. Uhura, a black woman who was one of the ship’s senior officers.  Diversity on American TV in 1966?? Holy cow–that alone is pushing the envelope.

1968 was “Star Trek”‘s last season.  The network didn’t like the ratings and the scripts of many episodes were poor (check out The Omega Glory with the Yangs and Kohms on the parallel Earth for one example).  The thing is, one of those horrible episodes contains a key moment in American TV history as a force for good social change.

The episode was Plato’s Stepchildren.  Godlike aliens capture and toy with the crew.  There are two scenes which stir controversy.  The first was that Spock and Captain Kirk wind up dancing together–two men dancing together…*gasp* that’s outrageous and could promote homosexual behavior.  The other–Kirk and Lt. Uhura kiss.  For the first time, in November 1968, someone white and someone black are permitted to kiss on television.

Doesn’t that sound silly–that the skin color of people kissing is controversial?  Initially it was supposed to be Spock, so that there would be fewer objections–yes, the Spock actor was white, but his character was ‘green’, so that’d be okay–because…yeah….   Instead, sensing the importance of what they were doing, William Shatner insisted it be his character, Captain Kirk, who kissed Uhura.  That sealed his place in history–and ramped up the meaning of the moment  There could be no rationalizing around it–this was an interracial kiss, white man, black woman.

Some objected, many were offended, but this one scene was a watershed moment.  By the 1970s, it permitted the envelope to be pushed further.  On “The Jeffersons”, Franklin Cover and Roxie Roker played the title characters’ married neighbors–a white man *gasp* who loved a black woman.  You get “Different Strokes” with a widowed white man adopting two young black boys and treating them directly and equally with his biological daughter.

We’re in 2020–and all of these situations seem so…dull and normal.  Black movie stars?  Duh.  TV stars?  Of course.  For a majority of people, skin color now is an irrelevant concern (sadly for a still-sizeable minority it does matter).

Still, the effect of Uhura went further–though this is a tangent, not where I intended for this article to go.  The actor who portrayed her, Nichelle Nichols, went on to work with NASA to recruit people other than white men to be astronauts.  One of those recruits was Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.  Another was Guion Bluford–the first black astronaut who was inspired to apply for the astronaut program because of Uhura on “Star Trek”.  Others included:

• Drs. Judith Resnik and Ron McNair, both killed in the Challenger explosion

• Lori Garver who became a senior NASA administrator

• General Charles Bolden, USMC.

Everyone has heard of Sally Ride.  Why don’t we hear about Bluford?  (Dude is on almost every list of the 100 greatest blacks in American frickin’ history…and I’d bet until you read this, you never heard of him…and until I sat to write this…me either.)

All of this because of her role as Uhura and breaking barriers–a black woman in charge, a black woman who kissed a white man.All of this because of her role as Uhura and breaking barriers–a black woman in charge, a black woman who kissed a white man.All of this because of her role as Uhura and breaking barriers–a black woman in charge, a black woman who kissed a white man.