In One Ear: Titanic black guy
Published 9:23 am Tuesday, December 11, 2018
Elleda Wilson <ewilson@dailyastorian.com>
Wed, Aug 8, 2018, 2:08 PM
to me
This man was the only passenger of known African ancestry to die on the Titanic in 1912
This man was the only passenger of known African ancestry to die on
the Titanic in 1912
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Joseph Phillippe Lemercier Laroche (first from right) and his family
— Vozafric Magazine
When the 1997 blockbuster movie, “Titanic” was released in 1997,
telling the story of the over 1,000 people who died in the world’s
biggest shipping disaster in 1912, there was no portrayal of any
African or black person aboard the ship.
But later research by the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry would
reveal that there were a distinguished Haitian man and his white wife
on board the ship.
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Joseph Phillippe Lemercier Laroche, who would later become the only
man of African descent to die in the Titanic ship disaster, was from a
privileged class in Haiti and had received education from private
tutors.
Born on May 26, 1889, in Cap Haitien, Haiti, Laroche was the son of a
white French army captain and a Haitian woman who was a descendant of
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the first ruler of independent Haiti.
Laroche’s uncle, Dessalines M. Cincinnatus, was president of Haiti
from 1911 to 1912.
Fluent in French and English, Laroche attended classes in Beauvais and
Lille, France, and received his certificate in engineering in 1907.
Laroche and his family — pinterest.com
A year after, he married Juliette Marie Louise Lafargue, the daughter
of a widowed Paris wine merchant and they had two children.
Laroche worked for a brief moment on the Paris Metro Line but due to
racial discrimination, he found it difficult acquiring a permanent job
in France despite his degree and fluency in both English and French.
Staying with his wife’s family, Laroche’s youngest child was also
sickly and her medical expenses became a burden on their finances.
In 1912, after realizing that they were expecting a third child,
Laroche decided to return to Haiti with his wife and children, hoping
to get a decent job and income there due to his family’s political
connections.
He got tickets from his mother for the family to return to Haiti via
La France, but reports indicated that the ocean liner banned children
from dining with their parents in the dining room.
Laroche decided to exchange their La France first class tickets for
second-class tickets on the R.M.S. Titanic, the largest and most
lavish ship built to date.
When Laroche and his family boarded the Titanic from the harbor of
Grande Rade near Fort de l’Quest on April 10, 1912, they relished the
luxurious services on the ship, which included dining with first-class
passengers, even though they had to deal with weird stares from the
over 2,000 passengers and even the crew who appeared not pleased with
their interracial marriage.
Then the worst happened on April 15; the Titanic collided with an
iceberg and sank, killing 1,500 people.
An illustration of the Titanic disaster — YouTube
Historical accounts say that as the ship sank in the early morning of
April 15, Laroche stuffed the pockets of his coat with money and
jewels and took his wife and children up to the boat deck.
He wrapped the coat around his wife, and his last words to her were:
“Here, take this, you are going to need it. I’ll get another boat. God
be with you. I’ll see you in New York.”
Laroche died in the disaster and his body was never recovered. His
wife returned to Paris with her daughters and gave birth to their son,
Joseph Lemercier Laroche on December 17, 1912.
Laroche’s story has since been described as the wonderful love story
the Titanic movie missed.
