[9] Disliking her name, Nichols asked her parents for a new one; they suggested Nichelle, which they said meant "victorious maiden" (from Nike and the suffix -elle).

[10] The family later moved into an apartment in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago, where Nichols attended Englewood High School, graduating in 1951.

[19] On the West Coast, she appeared in The Roar of the Greasepaint and For My People, and garnered high praise for her performance in the James Baldwin play Blues for Mister Charlie.

I looked across the room and whoever the fan was had to wait because there was Dr. Martin Luther King walking towards me with this big grin on his face.

"Calling Nichols a "vital role model", King compared her work on the series to the marches of the ongoing civil rights movement.

Whoopi Goldberg has also spoken of Nichols' influence,[26] saying she asked for a role on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and her character Guinan was specially created, while Jemison appeared on an episode of the series.

[27] In her role as Lieutenant Uhura, Nichols kissed white actor William Shatner (as Captain James T. Kirk) in the November 22, 1968 Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren".

In her autobiography Beyond Uhura, Star Trek and Other Memories, Nichols cited a letter from a white Southerner who wrote, "I am totally opposed to the mixing of the races.

However, any time a red-blooded American boy like Captain Kirk gets a beautiful dame in his arms that looks like Uhura, he ain't gonna fight it."

In it, she claimed that the role of Peggy Fair in the television series Mannix was offered to her during the final season of Star Trek, but producer Gene Roddenberry refused to release her from her contract.

(1967),[31][17] and portrayed Dorienda, a foul-mouthed madam in Truck Turner (1974) opposite Isaac Hayes, her only appearance in a blaxploitation film.

She was twice nominated for the Chicago theatrical Sarah Siddons Award for Best Actress, first for her portrayal of Hazel Sharpe in Kicks and Co., and again for her performance in The Blacks.

[40][17] Nichols had a recurring role on the second season of the NBC drama Heroes, first in the episode "Kindred", which aired October 8, 2007.

She portrayed Nana Dawson, the matriarch of a New Orleans family financially and personally devastated by Hurricane Katrina, who cares for her orphaned grandchildren and her great-nephew, series regular Micah Sanders.

She received her first Daytime Emmy nomination for "Outstanding Guest Performer in a Drama Series" for the role on March 22, 2017.

[46] 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.

[50] 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.

[55] In her autobiography, Nichols wrote that she was romantically involved with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry for a few years in the 1960s.

Hudec went on to marry Gene Roddenberry and have a regular supporting role as nurse Christine Chapel on Star Trek.

[64][65] A magnetic resonance imaging scan confirmed a small stroke had occurred, and she began inpatient therapy.

[67] Following a legal dispute over the actions of her manager-turned-caretaker Gilbert Bell, her son Kyle Johnson filed for conservatorship in 2018.