The 'Star Trek' kiss may have been the first inter racial kiss on American TV, although it is claimed that Sammy Davis, Jr. and Nancy Sinatra kissed briefly on the variety program Movin' With Nancy in December 1967.

However, the first interracial kiss on British television was in Emergency Ward 10 in 1964.


In the same year as the William Shatner/Grace Nichols kiss - a piece of sci fiction (the kiss was actually portrayed as having been forced by alien telekinesis!) there was uproar about an 'incident' on
Petula Clark's TV show.

In early 1968 (then at the height of her popularity in America) NBC invited her to host her own TV music special in the U.S. Black singer Harry Belafonte was invited to perform on the show and also do a song or two with Clark

During a taping of the show in March 1968, while singing a duet with Belafonte titled "On the Path of Glory", an anti-war song that she had composed, Petula Clark innocently and naturally touched Belafonte's arm toward the end of the song. Doyle Lott, a vice president from Chrysler, the show's sponsor, was present at the taping.

Lott objected to the "interracial touching"

He insisted they substitute a different take – one with Clark and Belafonte standing well away from each other. But Clark and her husband, Claude Wolff, the executive producer of the show, refused. They destroyed all the other takes of the song, and delivered the finished program to NBC with the touching segment as part of the show.
Clark, who had ownership of the special, told NBC that the performance would be shown intact or she would not allow the special to be aired at all

The show was broadcast on April 8th, 1968 with Clark doing several numbers on her own as well as Belafonte doing several on his own before they sang together. It marked the first time a man and woman of different races exchanged physical contact on American television.   

"When Harry Met Petula"
- just a little bit of history........