“Why shouldn't I play a neurosurgeon?”

Reading the obituaries section of the Globe and Mail this past week and noticed that Percy Rodrigues had passed away at 89. Without an in-depth knowledge of Star Trek character actors, it is hard to recognize that name, yet we should. Rodrigues was Canadian, from Montreal, and broke some fairly substantial racial barriers in Hollywood. Besides being Commodore Stone, in one of hammy Star Trek scripts that called for Captain Kirk's Court-martial, Percy was the first black actor to break into the world of daytime TV, playing Dr Harry Miles on Peyton Place.

"Television didn't have its equivalent of Jackie Robinson - there wasn't that one moment when the race barrier was broken. But Percy was one of a very small army of actors who were in a relatively quiet way beginning to get these roles that television was very reluctant in the 1960s to give to black actors” - Robert J. Thompson, a professor of television and pop culture at Syracuse University.

I bet you all immediately recognized him without knowing his name, as did I, but reading about such a person, who built his own house, was the sparing partner for Joe Louis before the Max Schmelling fight and possessed the definition of a booming voice, I can't help but feel we've really lost a pretty great human being.

Besides, I swear he was the model for the Simpson's Dr Hibbert. I swear...