As we approach the centennial year of the most epic event of the early 20th Century, everyone from historians of pop culture, internet bloggers and filmmakers are already in a rush to pay tribute to or make money from the disaster that took place in the icy waters of the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912. As we remember the estimated 1,517 individuals who lost their lives on the Titanic, and as Hollywood movie director James Cameron readies his blockbuster 1997 film for a brand new release in 3D, I wonder how many of us will know or remember that the Laroche family of Paris, France were the only family of color unlucky enough to be on the doomed ocean liner. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet's characters were fictional but Joseph Laroche, his wife Juliette, 3 year-old Simmone and 1 year-old Louise were very real, indeed!
In the earlier days of this blog, I tried to give honor to the Laroche family in a blog post that I have since removed for the simple fact that it was a hot hodgepodge of a mess mixed with fact and Negro folklore. I hope this time around I do them better justice. With the exception of a few additional photos, I have decided to use much of the same text of the original post that appeared here in 2009. I have also uncovered the additional story of Mrs. Mary Ethel Moore, an African American woman working as a maid for a wealthy American family in Paris. Recorded in the 1950's, Ms. Moore told how she narrowly escaped passage on the Titanic.
For many years, the prevailing thought was that the only black man that could have been on the Titanic would have been in the bottom class rung of the ship shining the shoes of somebody in first class. There used to be a running joke among many African Americans of the period centered around one of the most well-known tricksters in black folklore called Shine and the Sinking of the Titanic. But the truth of the matter couldn't have been more dramatically different for the Haitian-born, French-educated engineer, Joseph Phillippe Lemercier Laroche, his French-born wife, and their two little girls who unfortunately ended up as passengers aboard the Titanic.
Joseph Laroche descended directly from Haitian royalty! Jean-Jacques Dessalines, one of the major leaders of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) is an ancestor. Too early to be televised, this revolution was most definitely live as thousands of black slaves successfully revolted against French colonization on the isle of Saint-Domingue, and thus became the first republic ruled by descendants of Africans. With the iconic Toussaint L'Ouverture as their leader, Dessalines was his chief officer. When Toussaint was eventually captured by French troops, Dessalines assumed leadership and in 1803, Napoleon was defeated. Elected by a council of generals primarily made up by the second-tier mulatto class, Dessalines became the Governor-General of the new independent nation. But this wasn't enough! Dessalines proclaimed himself Emperor of Haiti, and continued the pattern of violence established under the former colonial rule. For his cabinet, Dessalines needed literate and educated officials, and placed in these positions well-educated Haitians, who were disproportionately from the light-skinned mulatto class, and who often had close family ties with the French. They married amongst each other and the Dessalines clan would remain among the aristocracy of Haiti for the next 100 years. It is from these ranks that Joseph Laroche stepped.
Indeed, at the time of the sinking of the Titanic, Joseph Laroche's uncle, Dessalines Cincinnatus Leconte, was the president of Haiti. Now considered as the country's most productive president of the early Twentieth century, Leconte met an untimely death in a suspicious, freak explosion, ironically in the same year that his nephew perished on the Titanic.
Joseph Laroche was born on May 26, 1886. In 1901, at the age of 15, he was sent to France to be educated, as so many of the young men of the black upper classes were accustomed. Within a few years, he met Juliette LaFargue, the daughter of a prosperous merchant. Father Lafargue, although impressed with Joseph, did not allow his daughter to marry until Laroche completed his degree in engineering in 1908. It is believed that for all of his culture, credentials and pedigree, Joseph Laroche could not buy a job in France, but he was employed for awhile on the building of one of the early Metro lines in Paris. Still, it wasn't enough to support a growing family! He wanted to go back home to Haiti and take his family with him. The move was planned in 1913, but in 1912 Juliette discovered she was pregnant again. Back in Haiti, Joseph's mother was so happy to receive the news that she immediately purchased first-class tickets for them to sail home on the French liner, La France. Right before departure, Joseph learned the ship did not allow children to dine with their parents, and made the ill-fated decision to switch their passage for second class tickets aboard the Titanic.
The Titanic was the largest and most lavish ship that had ever been built! The ship's decor ranged from Italian Renaissance to Georgian, the cost of a first class parlor suit was $4,350, and first class boasted some of the most wealthy folk in Britan and America with a collective wealth of over $500 million dollars. The Laroche family boarded this luxury water palace on April 10, 1912, and for the next two days, enjoyed much of the ship's splendor sharing many of the same amenities as the first class passengers. They dined in the same dinner parlors, and according to a few survivor reports, the Laroches conversed freely with some of the other passengers. Fellow shipmate, Kate Buss, referring to the Laroche girls (right) wrote "there are two of the finest little 'Jap(anese) baby girls who look like dolls running about." They were charming and good-looking but they did not totally escape racism aboard, especially among the crew members who reportedly centered the focus of their hatred toward all the "darker-skinned" passengers, and no doubt, Joseph Laroche was the darkest of all.
The builders of the ship, The White Star Line, had issued press throughout the world declaring that the Titanic was "designed to be unsinkable" and everyone believed it. When the iceberg hit late in the evening on April 14th, Captain Edward J. Smith was arrogant and adamant and didn't want to hear about it. They had felt superior and invincible and failed to take the proper precautions only having enough lifesaving equipment for 1,178 of the 2,228 passengers and crew. The original plans called for 64 wooden lifeboats but that number was reduced to 16 so that passengers could look cute and have more mobility about deck. Of the total number of people aboard the Titanic, only 706 survived, and 1,517 perished. It is also popularly believed that the men stood gallantly by and allowed the women and children to be saved first, but this is not quite the truth, either. First-class men were four times as likely to survive as second-class men, and twice as likely to survive as third class men. Nearly every first class woman survived compared with 86 percent of those in second class and less than half of those in third class. Everyone had a better chance of being saved than a third class child with only 34 percent of the those children having survived.
Joseph Laroche was among the 166 second class passengers known to have perished. His body was not recovered in the aftermath.
Without diapers, food and among wailing widows and floating bodies, Juliette clung to her children but her feet were frozen blue and stiff. Some say they were in raft 14, some say raft 16, but they were rescued six hours later by the RMS Carpathia (above) and delivered to safety in New York City.
They received medical attention at St. Vincent's Hospital, and were provided with shelter, money, clothes and food by a well-know philanthropist. Juliette Laroche returned to France pregnant to live with her father, and a week before Christmas, Joseph Lemercier Laroche Jr. was born. But Judith Geller, author of Titanic: Women and Children First, wrote that "nowhere in the copius 1912 press descriptions of the ship and the interviews with the survivors was the presence of a black family among the passengers ever mentioned." Juliette would eventually enter a long legal battle with the White Star Line. Geller adds that "lawyers came and went, no settlement arrived and Juliette, with her three children, lived in poverty through the first World War."
In 1918, the White Star line finally awarded Juliette Laroche about $22,119 - the eqivalent of close to $300,000 today. She never remarried and any mention of the tragedy of the Titanic was strictly off-limits. Her daughters never married. Juliette Laroche died in Paris in 1980, 68 years after the sinking of the Titanic. Simonne preceded her in death in 1973. Joseph Laroche Jr., married and sired offspring. He died in 1987. In 1998, Louise Laroche (right) was present when the Titanic Historical Society dedicated a stone marker in Cherbourg commemorating the Titanic passengers who sailed from its port. She died that very same year at the age of 87. There is no evidence that any of the younger Laroche's ever traveled to Haiti or ever heard from their Hatian relatives again. Hardly known among the general public, their existence has always been known by a handful of Titanic historians but not talked about. Until now.
These three photographs, were recently released by the Institute for Exploration, Center for Archeological Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, NOAA Office of Exploration. They were taken at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean at the Titanic's underwater gravesite, and show matching pairs of shoes laying in such close proximity, that they are believed to be the remains of a ship victim who came to rest there 100 years ago.
Mrs. Mary Ethel Moore, Jet Magazine, July 23, 1953.
