Black Man on the Titanic: The Story of Joseph Laroche.

• Author: Brantley, Amber

Bile, Serge. Black Man on the Titanic: The Story of Joseph Laroche. Coral Gables, FL: Mango Publishing Group, 2019.

The last voyage of the Titanic is a story that nearly everyone has heard. The discourse surrounding the fascinating tale, however, emphasizes elite white passengers. In the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic, the story is centered on Jack and Rose, two fictional characters who come from different social classes and eventually fall in love after meeting on the ship. There was, however, a real-life love story on the Titanic that involved Joseph and Louise Laroche. In Black Man on the Titanic: The Story of Joseph Laroche, the reader is introduced to a Haitian man of color who traveled on the Titanic. In this ethnography, Serge Bile, a French-Ivoirian journalist, re-creates the story of Joseph Laroche with a plethora of primary sources. He explores topics such as race and class at a time when Black people were legally discriminated against throughout Western civilization. The preface provides a brief background that reveals that Laroche was the nephew of Haitian President Cincinnatus Leconte and a direct descendant of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the man who proclaimed Haitian independence in 1804. He was raised among the privileged Haitian elite, tutored at home, and fluent in French and English. When he was fifteen years old, he went to France and earned a degree in engineering. He married Juliette Marie Louise Lafargue, the daughter of a white wine merchant, in 1907. Because of racial discrimination, however, he was never able to obtain lucrative employment in France.

In chapter 1, "The New York Express," Laroche's family is introduced. He had two daughters, Simonne and Marie Louise, born in 1909 and 1910, respectively. The youngest child had medical problems, which strained the family's finances, and by 1912 they were expecting a third child (a boy named Joseph who was born after his fathers death). This convinced Laroche to return to Haiti where he knew his family's political connections would guarantee a lucrative income. Laroche's mother sent him tickets to return to Haiti aboard the La France. However, the ocean liner's policy banning children dining with their parents in the dining room led Laroche to exchange their first-class tickets for second-class tickets on the Titanic. This chapter describes the ill-fated trip on the Titanic. Significant...