Brian Williams agrees.
The conflicting accounts of Nichelle Nichols meeting MLK (with sources)
- Thread starter RookieBatman
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In the vast swaths of history, most of what we have is one person's telling of it. We generally take it as legit unless there is something to doubt it. Sometimes things that cause people to doubt something are completely nonsense. Shakespeare was the undisputed author of the plays credited to him until the mid 19th century when the idea of a low born merchant's son writing the greatest plays in the English language was unacceptable. More modern and scientific studies of the plays and parts the man was known to play provide some pretty solid evidence that he wrote the plays.
I think the key facts we can take away from what Nichelle has related are that she spoke with Dr. King and what he said to her convinced her to stick with Star Trek. She has been remarkably consistent over the years with what she has said. Whether he said that in their first meeting or a second conversation is irrelevant. That she was unhappy with her role and he told her that she was a role model (a status which has been verified from other sources as accurate). That she took that small TV role and ended up working as an astronaut recruiter for NASA really proves that her role at that time was significant. That she credits a conversation with MLK for sticking with it, in light of other things mentioned in this threat, is likely accurate. If he felt it was important it would have definitely made the effort to say something. I suppose we could check with her family, but they might not no anything and while from a history documentation standpoint that doesn't make any difference, to some people that lack of verification would prove it didn't happen, even as unlikely it is that he might have mentioned it to his kids.
So I think that the quest for what she has said and when is a worthwhile endeavor, I think that in the end it would just be to clarify what she said and when and to gather the pieces of the story together. The human mind is not perfect and sometimes she might include a piece of the story that she skipped other times and sometimes she might tell a shortened version. 50 years on there are not a lot of people we can contact to solidly verify her story. The best we can hope for is to make her story clearer.
I think the key facts we can take away from what Nichelle has related are that she spoke with Dr. King and what he said to her convinced her to stick with Star Trek. She has been remarkably consistent over the years with what she has said. Whether he said that in their first meeting or a second conversation is irrelevant. That she was unhappy with her role and he told her that she was a role model (a status which has been verified from other sources as accurate). That she took that small TV role and ended up working as an astronaut recruiter for NASA really proves that her role at that time was significant. That she credits a conversation with MLK for sticking with it, in light of other things mentioned in this threat, is likely accurate. If he felt it was important it would have definitely made the effort to say something. I suppose we could check with her family, but they might not no anything and while from a history documentation standpoint that doesn't make any difference, to some people that lack of verification would prove it didn't happen, even as unlikely it is that he might have mentioned it to his kids.
So I think that the quest for what she has said and when is a worthwhile endeavor, I think that in the end it would just be to clarify what she said and when and to gather the pieces of the story together. The human mind is not perfect and sometimes she might include a piece of the story that she skipped other times and sometimes she might tell a shortened version. 50 years on there are not a lot of people we can contact to solidly verify her story. The best we can hope for is to make her story clearer.
didn't they overdub her singing though? that's kinda nastyShe got to do her fan dance, and lock Mr. Adventure in a closet!
Anyway, I thought I remembered her saying at a convention it was a letter from MLK.
in other words .....(voice cracks)HUMAN!
I believe the essence of the story is true, even if it happened in two incidents rather than all at once. But Bill Shatner books are filled with whoppers though. He claimed the producers sent him to negotiate the citty on the edge of forever script with harlen ellison. Ellison has said many times any time he and shatner met was purely social and they never talked scripts.
Noted.So is backseat moderating...
Back to the topic.
We've been around this on the board quite a number of times over the years. What set off alarm bells initially was that some fans who'd been to conventions in the 70s recalled she told a different version of the story, and the story as we know it now didn't really materialize until around the time of the publicity blitz near ST4 in 1986.
We at Fact Trek actually tried to go down the road of proving she met him and where, but so far we've run into nothing but dead-ends there, too. In that research we found a couple of claims by her which don't seem to line up with the historical record, but the particulars of that aren't worth getting into right now because we're still digging.
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This is probably the reason I haven't had any trouble believing this. I had never heard the story until that media blitz occurred, and I saw no reason to doubt it because of my belief that most people are trustworthy enough to tell the truth about themselves on a regular basis.
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Who said she was a liar?
Given that the whole thread is about a subject upon which she hasn't remained "remarkably consistent over the years," how remarkable her level of consistency has been over the years must depend upon which subject and which years we're talking about. The citations in the OP are enough to demonstrate falling below the bar of "remarkable consistency" in the case of the MLK story: the version told to NPR has her being asked in person not to leave the show, whereas the version told to Forbes has the conversation happening over telephone; both versions came from her.
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Of course I can't find the article now. No I'm not making it up. I swear it LOL.
Found it!
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/interview-with-nichelle-nichols-at-fan-expo-vancouver-2013
I've found these two as well:
1. This one says she sang at the late Martin Luther King's funeral. So I imagine that would be easier to disprove.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-...hen she met King,my mouth just dropped open.”
2.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=UBnQDr5gPskC&dat=19791208&printsec=frontpage&hl=en
Her interview with Neil deGrasse seems pretty convincing too.
Still even if you could prove say she didn't sing at Dr King's funeral. That could just be her misremembering,
Thanks. I hadn't seen that particular interview.
Saying you sang at a very famous person's funeral -- if you didn't -- that would be a "lie."
Misremembering would be if you got the name of the song wrong, or where you performed in the proceedings.
Mind you I'm not SAYING she didn't sing there.
You haven't studied history very much. When a person repeats a story over the course of 40 years and they basically say the same thing, even if some details change, it is remarkably consistent for human communication and memory. It is rare that you find someone who can tell the same story year after year and hit all the same points every time. Usually they have practiced it at that point and that is actually less reliable than general memory, as fallible as that is.
She met Dr. King. What he said encouraged her to stick with the role. What other points are actually important?
“I spoke and sang at his funeral.”
FWIW there's film of the funeral service and no sign of NN, unless she's in the congregation. That said, there were memorials all over the country, including in L.A.
<looks at spreadsheet containing data from 29 NN interviews>
She's not been entirely consistent. In a 1988 interview she tells the oft-told tale about planning to leave the show and then changing her mind, but there's no mention of MLK. In some old interviews it's GR talking her out of it, and in others it's MLK. It's possible over time she's conflated two or more incidents.
She's not been entirely consistent. In a 1988 interview she tells the oft-told tale about planning to leave the show and then changing her mind, but there's no mention of MLK. In some old interviews it's GR talking her out of it, and in others it's MLK. It's possible over time she's conflated two or more incidents.
"Remarkable" is synonymous with "uncommon" or "extraordinary" [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/remarkable]. A shifting account doesn't strike me as either. It may be typical perhaps, but in no way extraordinary.
When looking at that data, how many pieces are consistent and how many are not contradicted by other statements? And it is likely that more than one person tried to get her to stay on the show and she isn't merging anything, but telling us of two or more different things that went together to convince her to stay. And don't forget shorthand in story telling. Hollywood does it all the time but so do people when relating their memories. Sometimes something doesn't come up that they recall in a later interview. It doesn't mean they changed their story, only that their memory, as is typical for human memory, related different parts at different times. In cases where you can corroborate the accounts, you can usually find things that a person missed and things they shorthanded into something simpler to relate.
1) House was referring to lying to oneself. *
2) Either way, it doesn't change my opinion. Unless someone has a demonstrable issue with telling the truth, they usually do.
* I can't see your other image.
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