The story of the only Black passenger on the RMS Titanic
In many depictions of the events surrounding the RMS Titanic, the people shown are white and many assume there was nobody of color on the ship, well that was not the case.
Joseph Philippe Lemercier Laroche was born in 1886 in Haiti. At the age of 15, he went to France to study engineering. He spoke French, Creole, and English fluently. After obtaining a degree in engineering, he married Juliette Lafargue, a white French woman with whom he was fast friends when they first met through a mentor. Due to the rampant racial discrimination, he had difficulty finding a job despite his qualifications. When he did get jobs, he received poor pay from racist employers. He decided to look outside of France for new opportunities to support his two young daughters & his pregnant wife. The couple decided they would move to Haiti, where Laroche’s uncle, Cincinnatus Leconte, was the President of Haiti and who promised he would appoint his nephew to a professorship in mathematics. Tickets were bought to board a ship called La France to journey to Haiti. However, due to the ship’s policy on separating parents & children, the couple decided to instead trade their first-class tickets for second-class tickets on RMS Titanic so that they could stay with their daughters, one of whom often fell sick. From New York, Titanic’s destination, they planned to take another ship to Haiti. However, the fateful night/early morning of April 15, 1912 struck.
Juliette and one of her daughters, Simonne, managed to get on a lifeboat. Laroche’s last known actions are rushing to make sure his second daughter, Louise, was placed on the same lifeboat as her mother and sister. After ensuring his family was in a lifeboat, he promised his wife they would see each other soon. His body was never recovered; he was 25 years old when he died. (continued in the comments.)
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