Where No Black Woman Has Gone Before
Black women like Stacey Abrams and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson are reshaping the future
I have admittedly never watched Star Trek (the original or newer versions), but when I learned that Stacey Abrams made a cameo in the season finale of Paramount+’s Star Trek: Discovery, it immediately piqued my interest.
So, last Thursday, with popcorn in hand, I sat down to watch the finale. I tried to keep up with the plot, and then, with just a few minutes left before the show ended, the President of United Earth stepped off a spaceship wearing her hair in a plaited updo and a regal cape fit for the leader of a planetary state. I couldn’t help but smile from ear to ear as I watched Stacey Abrams, aka “Madam President,” greet the members of the Discovery starship. Hearing them call her “President” felt so right, like watching her embody her future potential title with confidence.
Breaking molds
Abrams may have been playing a character, but her leadership in Georgia and around the country is no work of fiction. In the book Caste, author Isabel Wilkerson talks about America’s long-running play that has cast all of its inhabitants into fixed and rigid roles based on the color of their skin. “For generations,” Wilkerson writes, “Everyone has known who is the center stage in the lead. Everyone knows who the hero is, who the supporting characters are, who is the sidekick good for laughs, and who is in shadow, the undifferentiated chorus with no lines to speak, no voice to sing, but necessary for the production to work.”
In the last several years, however, Black women like Stacey Abrams have increasingly broken the mold for those roles — defying the usual casting and taking the center stage as national leaders, powerbrokers and decision-makers.
From the Silver Screen to Supreme Court
At this very moment, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is poised to change the face of the U.S. Supreme Court forever. If confirmed by the Senate, she will become our nation’s first Black woman Supreme Court Justice. Her presence on the bench would exemplify who can carry the torch as a standard bearer of justice in a country where Black women continue to demand equality, body sovereignty, and safety. When women like Jackson and Stacey Abrams emerge on the stage of our national theater in roles they were never considered for, they represent a threat to an old playbill.
Jackson and Abrams are contributing to a world where young women and girls can imagine themselves as co-creators of their futures, as members of a cast with power and authority to shape their present. In her newest project Naomi, award-winning director Ava DuVernay tells the story of a young Black high schooler and Superman fan who finds out it’s not just her favorite superhero that has power, but that she possesses her own special powers as well. Likewise, characters like Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia and Danai Gurira’s Okoye in Marvel’s Black Panther are helping to reshape our collective consciousness by showing Black women as fearless heroes who save the day, and power players who summon those around them to their highest selves.
We see ourselves
In researching the original 1960s version of Star Trek, I learned that actress Nichelle Nichols, who played the ground-breaking character of head communications officer Lieutenant Uhura, submitted her resignation in 1967 after the first season and was prepared to make a return to theater. That same weekend, she met Dr. Martin Luther King at an NAACP event in Beverly Hills and he told her how much he and his family loved the show and seeing her on it. When she explained that she was planning to leave the show, he told her, “You cannot and you must not.” About the significance of her role, he said, “When we see you, we see ourselves, and we see ourselves as intelligent and beautiful and proud.”
Dr. King explained to Nichols that her role allowed Black Americans to imagine a future with them in it. “Three hundred years from now…we are here. We are marching,” he told her. “We all know they cannot destroy us because we are there in the 23rd century.”
They can’t destroy us now, either, because we are here presiding over courtrooms, leading local governments, in the White House, and passing life-changing legislation. In this century, a Black woman like Stacey Abrams can be president in a sci-fi classic and in real life too.
In Solidarity and Love,
Fola and the Democracy in Color Team
A version of this article was published in the Democracy in Color newsletter. Sign up to receive weekly letters like this in your inbox here.
