Sept. 8, 1966

Nichelle Nichols became one of the first Black women to play a lead role on television, portraying Communication Officer Lt. Uhura on “Star Trek.” 

Ebony magazine featured her as the first Black astronaut, “a triumph of modern-day TV over modern-day NASA.” A talented singer and dancer, Nichols told creator Gene Roddenberry after the first season that she planned to leave — news that devastated him. At a fundraiser after that, an organizer told her that her greatest fan wanted to meet her. When she turned around, she found herself staring at Martin Luther King Jr., who raved about what her role meant to him, his family and others around the world. 

“When I could finally catch my breath after hearing so many accolades from a man I considered as my leader, I thanked him and then told him I was leaving the series,” she recalled. His smile vanished, and he told her that she must not leave: “You have opened a door that must not be allowed to close. For the first time, the world sees us as we should be seen, as equals, as intelligent people.” 

In fact, he shared that “Star Trek” was the only show that he and his wife let their children stay up late and watch, “You are their hero!” 

The next day, Nichols told Roddenberry she would stay, sharing King’s words. When she looked back at Roddenberry, a tear slid down his face. “And Gene,” she recalled, “was not a man to cry.” 

After “Star Trek” ended in 1969, she produced educational programs related to space and challenged NASA to “come down from your ivory tower of intelligent pursuit, because the next Einstein might have a Black face — and she’s female.” 

Afterward, she led an astronaut recruiting program for NASA that changed the faces of those who went into space. Sally Ride became the first woman in space, Guion Bluford Jr., the first African American in space, and Mae C. Jemison, the first Black woman in space who later played a part on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” the first real astronaut to do so.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

A Mississippian’s vote for president carries more weight than the vote of a Californian or than the vote of a resident of most other states.

Mississippi, with just under 3 million people, has six electoral votes for president — or one for every 496,880 of its citizens. California, on the other hand, has 54 electoral votes for about 39.5 million people — or one for about every 732,190 of its citizens.

But both Mississippi and California pale in comparison to sparsely populated Wyoming in terms of the weight of its electoral votes. Wyoming, with 576,851 people, has three electoral votes, or one vote for 192,284 Wyoming residents.

The national average, based on the latest U.S. Census numbers, is 632,518 people for each of the nation’s 538 electoral votes.

Votes for president in America are not equal.

The weight of electoral votes is of relevance as the nation goes through the cycle of electing the next president. The presidential election is viewed as a national race, but in a real sense it is about 10 separate campaigns in what has become known as swing states or purple states.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, and former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, will spend significant time and attention campaigning in Georgia, Pennsylvania and a handful of other swing states, while paying little or no attention to Mississippi, California or most other states.

America’s founding fathers opted not to elect the president by popular votes but by what is known as the Electoral College.

In that process, each state has the number of electoral votes equal to its number of U.S. House members plus its two senators. For instance, Mississippi has four U.S. House members and the two senators. California has 52 U.S. House members plus its two senators.

The fact that each state has two senators is one of the primary reasons the electoral votes of less populous states carry more weight than the votes of more populous states like California and Texas.

In all but two states, all of the electoral votes go to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes in that state regardless of the margin of victory. Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes. The two Senate electors go to the candidate who wins the most votes statewide in those two states. But a candidate gets one electoral vote for each congressional district won in Maine and Nebraska.

Nebraska, like Mississippi, is a solid Republican state. But because Nebraska does not have a winner-take-all Electoral College process, it is likely that Harris and Trump will spend more time in Nebraska’s 2nd District, considered a swing district, than in those much larger non-swing states.

The Electoral College was a compromise between the founding fathers who wanted the president to be elected via popular vote and those who wanted Congress to elect the president. And, like so many aspects of American history, the compromise had racial elements. The notorious Three-Fifths Compromise counted Black residents who could not vote as three-fifths of a person to benefit the Southern states, where a significant portion of the population was slaves. The Three-Fifths Compromise gave Southern states more representation in Congress and thus more representation in the Electoral College.

And to this day, it could be argued the Electoral College still discriminates against Black residents since many Southern states, including Mississippi, have higher percentages of Black citizens who are generally more prone to vote Democratic. Because of the Electoral College, those Black voters in the South have little influence since by wide margins Southern whites, who make up the majority, are more likely to vote Republican and swing the Southern’s states electoral votes to the Republican.

The Electoral College process is in the U.S. Constitution. To amend the Constitution and change the electoral process would be time consuming and burdensome.

But there is another process called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Under the compact, the Electoral College process could be circumvented if legislatures in states with a majority of the of the electoral votes (270) pledged to give their electors to the candidate who won the popular vote.

The proposal has been filed in the Mississippi Legislature but has never been given serious consideration. Thus far 17 states with 207 electoral votes have agreed to the compact. It is not likely to pass anytime soon, though, because Republican-dominated states generally oppose the plan — at least in part because the Republican presidential candidate has lost the popular vote in five of the last six elections.

In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million, but Trump would have won reelection if about 21,000 voters in a handful of swing states had voted for him instead of Biden.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Sept. 7, 1954

In compliance with the recent Brown v. Board of Education decision, schools in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., were desegregated. Baltimore was one of the first school systems to desegregate below the Mason-Dixon line. 

A month after a dozen Black students began attending what had been an all-white school, demonstrations took place, one of them turning violent when 800 whites attacked four Black students. White parents began pulling their children out of the schools, and by 1960, the district was majority Black.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.