Nichelle Nichols, the actress revered by “Star Trek” followers in all places for her position as Lieutenant Uhura, the communications officer on the starship U.S.S. Enterprise, died on Saturday in Silver Metropolis, N.M. She was 89.

The trigger was coronary heart failure, stated Sky Conway, a author and a movie producer who was requested by Kyle Johnson, Ms. Nichols’s son, to talk for the household.

Ms. Nichols had a protracted profession as an entertainer, starting as a teenage supper-club singer and dancer in Chicago, her hometown, and later showing on tv.

However she is going to without end be greatest remembered for her work on “Star Trek,” the cult-inspiring area journey collection that aired from 1966 to 1969 and starred William Shatner as Captain Kirk, the heroic chief of the starship crew; Leonard Nimoy (who died in 2015) as his science officer and adviser, Mr. Spock, an ultralogical humanoid from the planet Vulcan; and DeForest Kelley (who died in 1999) as Dr. McCoy, a.okay.a. Bones, the ship’s doctor.

A hanging magnificence, Ms. Nichols supplied a frisson of sexiness on the bridge of the Enterprise. She was typically clad in a cosy pink doublet and black tights; Ebony journal referred to as her the “most heavenly physique in ‘Star Trek’” on its 1967 cowl. Her position, nonetheless, was each substantial and traditionally important.

Uhura was an officer and a extremely educated and well-trained technician who maintained a businesslike demeanor whereas performing her high-minded duties. Ms. Nichols was among the many first Black ladies to have a number one position on a community tv collection, making her an anomaly on the small display screen, which till that point had not often depicted Black ladies in something aside from subservient roles.

In a November 1968 episode, in the course of the present’s third and closing season, Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura are compelled to embrace by the inhabitants of a wierd planet, leading to what’s extensively considered the primary interracial kiss in tv historical past.

Ms. Nichols’s first appearances on “Star Trek” predated the 1968 sitcom “Julia,” by which Diahann Carroll, enjoying a widowed mom who works as a nurse, turned the primary Black girl to star in a non-stereotypical position in a community collection.

(A collection referred to as “Beulah,” additionally referred to as “The Beulah Present,” starring Ethel Waters — and later Louise Beavers and Hattie McDaniel — because the maid for a white household, was broadcast on ABC within the early 1950s and subsequently cited by civil rights activists for its demeaning portraits of Black folks.)

However Uhura’s affect reached far past tv. In 1977, Ms. Nichols started an affiliation with the Nationwide Aeronautics and House Administration, contracting as a consultant and speaker to assist recruit feminine and minority candidates for spaceflight coaching; the next 12 months’s class of astronaut candidates was the primary to incorporate ladies and members of minority teams.

In subsequent years, Ms. Nichols made public appearances and recorded public service bulletins on behalf of the company. In 2012, after she was the keynote speaker on the Goddard House Heart throughout a celebration of African American Historical past Month, a NASA information launch concerning the occasion lauded her assist for the reason for range in area exploration.

“Nichols’s position as considered one of tv’s first Black characters to be greater than only a stereotype and one of many first ladies ready of authority (she was fourth answerable for the Enterprise) impressed hundreds of purposes from ladies and minorities,” the discharge stated. “Amongst them: Ronald McNair, Frederick Gregory, Judith Resnick, first American girl in area Sally Trip and present NASA administrator Charlie Bolden.”

Grace Dell Nichols was born in Robbins, Unwell., on Dec. 28, 1932 (some sources give a later 12 months), and grew up in Chicago. Her father was, for a time, the mayor of Robbins, and a chemist. At 13 or 14, bored with being referred to as Gracie by her mates, she requested a unique identify from her mom, who favored Michelle however steered Nichelle for the alliteration.

She was a ballet dancer as a toddler and had a singing voice with a naturally big selection — greater than 4 octaves, she later stated. Whereas attending Englewood Excessive College, she landed her first skilled gig in a revue on the Faculty Inn, a widely known Chicago nightspot.

There she was seen by Duke Ellington, who employed her a 12 months or two later together with his touring orchestra as a dancer in considered one of his jazz suites.

Ms. Nichols appeared in a number of musical theater productions across the nation in the course of the 1950s. In an interview with the Archive of American Tv, she recalled performing on the Playboy Membership in New York Metropolis whereas serving as an understudy for Ms. Carroll within the Broadway musical “No Strings” (although she by no means went on).

In 1959, she was a dancer in Otto Preminger’s movie model of “Porgy and Bess.” She made her tv debut in 1963 in an episode of “The Lieutenant,” a short-lived dramatic collection about Marines at Camp Pendleton created by Gene Roddenberry, who went on to create “Star Trek.”

Ms. Nichols appeared on different tv reveals over time — amongst them “Peyton Place” (1966), “Head of the Class” (1988) and “Heroes” (2007). She additionally appeared onstage sometimes in Los Angeles, together with in a one-woman present by which she did impressions of, and paid homage to, Black feminine entertainers who preceded her, together with Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey and Eartha Kitt.

However Uhura was to be her legacy: A decade after “Star Trek” went off the air, Ms. Nichols reprised the position in “Star Trek: The Movement Image,” and she or he appeared as Uhura, by then a commander, in 5 subsequent film sequels via 1991.

In addition to a son, her survivors embrace two sisters, Marian Smothers and Diane Robinson.

Ms. Nichols was married and divorced twice. In her 1995 autobiography, “Past Uhura: Star Trek and Different Recollections,” she disclosed that she and Roddenberry, who died in 1991, had been romantically concerned for a time. In an interview in 2010 for the Archive of American Tv, she stated that he had little to do along with her casting in “Star Trek” however that he defended her when studio executives needed to switch her.

When she took the position of Uhura, Ms. Nichols stated, she considered it as a mere job on the time, invaluable as a résumé enhancer; she absolutely supposed to return to the stage, as she needed a profession on Broadway. Certainly, she threatened to go away the present after its first season and submitted her resignation to Roddenberry. He instructed her to suppose it over for just a few days.

In a narrative she usually instructed, that Saturday evening she was a visitor at an occasion in Beverly Hills, Calif. — “I consider it was an N.A.A.C.P. fund-raiser,” she recalled within the Archive interview — the place the organizer launched her to somebody he described as “your largest fan.”

“He’s determined to satisfy you,” she recalled the organizer saying.

The fan, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., launched himself.

“He stated, ‘We admire you enormously, you realize,’ ” Ms. Nichols stated, and she or he thanked him and instructed him that she was about to go away the present. “He stated, ‘You can’t. You can’t.’”

Dr. King instructed her that her position as a dignified, authoritative determine in a preferred present was too essential to the reason for civil rights for her to forgo. As Ms. Nichols recalled it, he stated, “For the primary time, we will probably be seen on tv the way in which we needs to be seen day by day.”

On Monday morning, she returned to Roddenberry’s workplace and instructed him what had occurred.

“And I stated, ‘When you nonetheless need me to remain, I’ll keep. I’ve to.’”

Eduardo Medina contributed reporting.