Joseph Laroche Died Saving Family

In April 1912, Haitian engineer Joseph Laroche, the Titanic's only documented Black passenger, exchanged his family's first-class tickets aboard the SS France for second-class passage on the Titanic because the other ship would not let their children dine with them. He boarded on April 10 with his pregnant French wife, a woman named Juliette Lafargue, and their two young daughters, Simone and Louise. After the Titanic struck an iceberg on April 14, he woke his family and carried the sleeping children to the upper deck. Juliette and the girls escaped in a lifeboat and survived, but 25-year-old Laroche died in the sinking, and his body was never recovered.

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