The 1912 sinking of the Titanic has become one of the most infamous shipwrecks of all time. But the story of the only known Black man and his family aboard the ship has largely been excluded from history.
Joseph Laroche was born in Haiti on May 26, 1886 to an affluent family, the nephew of Cincinnatus Leconte, who had served as president of the country.
A diligent pupil, Laroche went to France to study engineering when he was 15 years old. There, he met Juliette Lafargue, the daughter of a wine seller. They married in March 1908.
When Laroche graduated from engineering school shortly after, he struggled to find employment in a country still marked by racial prejudice. The work he did find paid poorly, and, in 1911 — a year after his second daughter was born — Laroche decided he would return to Haiti in the hopes of finding a better-paying job there to support his growing family.
According to the Chicago Tribune, who talked with a descendent of Laroche, the engineer and his family were never meant to board the Titanic to begin with.
Laroche’s mother bought first-class tickets on a new French steamship as a welcoming gift for her son’s new family. Just a few months earlier, Juliette had discovered she was pregnant with their third child. The company, however, banned children from eating with their parents, and Laroche traded their tickets for second-class passage on a different ship: the Titanic.
On April 10, 1912, the Laroche family boarded the Titanic while a crowd of onlookers admired the ship from the jetty, a band playing “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem. The Titanic was billed as a luxury cruise ship, and was deemed unsinkable.
The Haitian engineer was reportedly the only Black man among the more than 2,000 people on board the ship.
In the early hours of April 15, a steward came to the Laroche’s family and told them to wear their life jackets. The Titanic had struck an iceberg a few hours before.
Laroche put their valuables, including some money and their jewels, into his pockets. Juliette, who didn’t speak English, let her husband, who spoke English fluently, lead her to the lifeboats.
“When the collision happened, there was a terrible panic. People were pushing in a hurry to get off the boat,” Juliette later recalled. “I felt someone grabbing me as well, a pair of hands took me and threw me into emptiness. I found myself in a lifeboat next to my little Simonne.”
Juliette glimpsed her husband, arms extended above the crowd, holding their youngest daughter aloft to protect her from the push. Someone grabbed her and put her on board the lifeboat.
“Then the lifeboat was once and for all lowered into the sea. I hardly had time to give my husband a final farewell,” Juliette said. “I heard his voice above the rumble yelling, ‘See you soon, darling. There will be space for everyone. Don’t worry about the lifeboats. Take care of our girls. See you soon.'”
But Laroche, along with an estimated 1,500 people, never made it off the Titanic, sinking with the ship that had been billed as unsinkable. His body was never found.
Laroche’s pregnant wife, Juliette, 22, and their two daughters made it off the ship and are said to have returned to France, where they lived in poverty for a few years until Juliette won a settlement from the Titanic disaster. She named her newborn son after his father, Joseph. She remained a widow until her death in 1973.
