Hello, everyone. This is my first post here and I want to use it to make a slight correction to an oft-misquoted bit of television lore.
PS. On a side note, last year, I got the honor of meeting Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura from Star Trek). When my girlfriend asked me why I was waiting in line to get Ms. Nichols' autograph, I explained to her that the characters Lt. Uhura and Captain Kirk shared one of the first (if not the first) inter-racial kisses on television, and that because that happened, that it has made it easier for the two of us (years later) to walk down the street together.
My girlfriend must have liked what she heard, because she ended up paying for an autographed picture, as well! 
That is so true! I had forgotten about that and I'm a big "Trekkie" from back at the beginning and all of the other Star Trek variations since then. I remember seeing that scene years ago, but I didn't think much of it. I didn't realize the social significance of it either....
ADDED 1-13-09:
"Nichelle Nichols, an African American, played Lt. Uhura. Nichols shared television's first interracial kiss with "Star Trek's" brash Captain James T. Kirk, played by William Shatner." This quote came from the following story on Star Trek's 40th anniversary:
newbielink:http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/Story?id=2412318&page=1 [nonactive]
ADDED 1-17-09:
I stumbled upon the original video today. It brought back a memory of that episode and if I remember correctly, they were forced to kiss for the entertainment of some God-like Dude. See it below:
newbielink:http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play?p=interracial&b=169&ei=UTF-8&tnr=21&vid=000164982996 [nonactive]
The kiss between Uhura and Kirk is often cited as the first interracial kiss on television. This is untrue for a number of reasons:
It was not the first IR kiss on television, period. That would be the kiss shared between two characters, a black nurse and a white doctor, on the British medical drama,
Emergency Ward 10, back in 1964.
It was not the first IR kiss on United States television either:
Almost a year earlier (11 December 1967), NBC broadcast an Emmy Award-winning musical-variety special entitled Movin' With Nancy, during which singers Nancy Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. greeted each other with a kiss. Desilu's flagship show, I Love Lucy, had years previously broken the barrier on Hispanic/Caucasian kissing. Also, The Little Rascals had some "innocent" kisses between its child stars, but these shorts had previously premiered in cinemas under the title Our Gang.
Finally, it wasn't even the first IR kiss on an episode of
Star Trek!
To be more precise, it was "the first kiss between a fictional white male and a fictional black female to premiere on American network television", as Kirk would kiss an Asian-American actress, France Nuyen, in a previous episode: "Elaan of Troyius".
This topic comes up so frequently that I often have to debunk it
All the quotes come from the article dealing with the episode newbielink:http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Plato%27s_Stepchildren_%28episode%29
[nonactive] at Memory-Alpha, the wiki on all things
Star Trek.
Live long and prosper, everybody
