Communications officer of the Enterprise in the original Star Trek, played by Nichelle Nichols: one of the first Black women in a major role on US television that wasn’t a servant.
Nichols wanted to quit after the first season. Martin Luther King Jr. talked her out of it: for the first time, he told her, Black people were being seen on screen as they should be seen. In 1968 her character kissed James T. Kirk, and for years that was called the first scripted interracial kiss on US TV (earlier ones have turned up since; the actors are said to have ruined the takes without the kiss so it couldn’t be cut).
Then she went to work for NASA, recruiting women and Black astronauts. Mae Jemison, the first Black woman in space, named Star Trek as an influence.