The passengers of the Titanic were an ethnic mosaic of humanity. In the years following the sinking, the demographics of the great ship began to be studied and scrutinized. A documentary entitled The Six, about the Chinese passengers on board the ship, was released in 2020. James Cameron’s 1997 film also gave notice to the many languages and nationalities that had boarded. One question, however, kept coming up among historians, sociologists, and general Titanic enthusiasts such as myself: were there any Black people on the Titanic?

According to statistics from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, there were more than 60 lynchings in 1912, the year the Titanic sank. Jim Crow laws had been a curse upon the nation for nearly 50 years by this point, and at least one contemporary article (from Philadelphia’s “afro-American press outlet” the Solid Rock Herald, later reprinted in the Pittsburgh Courier on May 4, 1912) picked up on the irony of these same hateful laws and how they – “certain conditions over which [they] have no control” – had actually prevented any African Americans from being able to board the Titanic in the first place. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” the short article would go on to say, seeking consolation in consensus even amidst the turmoil of America’s increasingly polarized post-Civil War era.

Then there was the news of famed African American boxer Jack Johnson out of Galveston, TX, who was believed by some to have died when the ship sank. Johnson was in the US at the time of the ship’s final port of call at Cobh, Ireland (then known as Queenstown), yet stories persisted that Johnson had been refused entry onto the ship in Southampton. Huddie William Ledbetter, a Louisiana blues singer better known as Lead Belly, even wrote a song about Johnson’s death aboard the Titanic. Johnson died in Franklinton, NC, in 1946, long after easily claiming the title of World Heavyweight Champion from James Jeffries on July 4, 1910. Jeffries, having come out of retirement just to face Johnson, wanted nothing more than to prove “that a white man is better than a Negro.” He failed in his endeavor after getting knocked down not once, but twice.

The Washington Post, in a year-end review published on December 29, 1912, attributed much of the sadness of the disaster to the “character and importance” of those who perished in the Atlantic, most of whom were, of course, white. Largely and intentionally excised from the unfolding rough draft of American history, African Americans, via a fascinating sociological and racial lens, inserted themselves into the story. One can hardly blame them. It’s what the human race has shown itself most capable of doing throughout history: inventing a fiction as a means of exposition or inclusion. So, Jack Johnson’s maritime status only grew, even though he was never on the ship. But it mattered not, for a cause had been born.

While Johnson’s non-death was immortalized in toast and song throughout the Black communities of Philadelphia and Harlem, passenger lists were pored over in search of any names of obvious African descent. None were found, though constantly passed over due to its French-sounding origins was the name Joseph Philippe Lemercier Laroche. Meanwhile, a mythical character named “Shine,” had begun to be celebrated throughout Black communities.

Shine is a towering figure in Black American folklore. Though not found on any passenger or crew member manifesto, Shine was honestly believed by many to have been the sole Black survivor of the disaster. Shine was not a real person, nor is it likely that he was inspired by any one real-life individual. Historians believe the name may have originated as an ironic insult to Black people with exceptionally dark skin. Following the sinking of the Titanic, Shine rose Phoenix-like from the forgotten ashes of history. No longer a simple placeholder of manliness or antiracism in early 20^th century Black America, Shine was now being hailed as the man who jumped overboard into the icy North Atlantic waters, outpaced a shark, and swam all the way to New York City – a total of 963 miles. Barbershops and Black clubs throughout the country sang songs and wrote poems about the legendary coal stoker who worked deep within the bowels of the most luxurious liner ever conceived.

Poet Langston Hughes, in a July 18, 1953, piece for the Chicago Defender called “When the Titanic Went Down Legend Says a Negro Was There,” spoke about his childhood in Kansas. “Thank God,” his elders would say, “there were no negroes on that ship.” Hughes, recalling the stories of Jack Johnson and the mythical Shine, disagreed. “Folklore has it otherwise.” Shine escaped not only the disaster, but the racism that had confined him to the boiler rooms in the first place. The following lines are from a piece Hughes wrote about the loss of the Titanic.

When all them white folks went to heaven

Shine was in Sugar Ray’s Bar drinking Seagram’s Seven.

In the 1968 edition of Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing edited by LeRoi Jones, we see yet another heroic rendition of Shine’s escape from what the Philadelphia Tribune referred to as the “ten-million-dollar-floating palace” in an article five days after the Titanic sank.

Shine jumped in the water and commenced to swim,

four thousand millionaires watchin’ him.

Captain say, “Shine, Shine, save poor me,

I’ll make you richer than old John D.”

Shine turned around and took another notion.

Say, “Captain, your money’s counterfeit in this big-assed ocean.”

Shine became a symbol, an attempt to take part of the American life and dream and inject it with a bit of the Black experience. He continues still, to this day, as a part of that anti-authoritarian mythos. Larry Neal, writing in the afterword to Black Fire, suggests that the stories of Shine are “part of the private mythology of Black America. [The] symbolism is direct and profound. Shine is US.”

So, we have Jack Johnson’s firm defiance against Jim Crow in the boxing ring, and we have Shine’s legendary heroics on and off the ship. This brings us back to that name with the Francophonic origins….

On May 26, 1886, Joseph Laroche was born to a well-to-do family in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti. With a mind geared towards engineering, he traveled to France at the young age of 15. Here he would eventually meet and fall in love with Juliette Lafargue, the white daughter of a wine merchant. They married in March of 1908, though racial attitudes of the time (especially concerning miscegenation) prevented him from being able to find meaningful work with meaningful pay. With two young daughters and a third child on the way, the Laroche family decided to return to Haiti, where a lucrative, family-operated job awaited Joseph. Joseph’s mother bought them the tickets, and they were soon comfortably adjusting themselves in their second-class cabin aboard the Titanic on its maiden voyage to New York.

The rest of Joseph’s story sadly reads like so many others from that night. On April 14 at 11:40 p.m., Joseph heard and felt a crash and a grinding noise. Quickly surmising the seriousness of the situation, Joseph gathered their valuables while translating to Juliette, who couldn’t speak English, that they were to immediately get on deck and into a lifeboat. Joseph saw his wife and two children into lifeboat No. 10 before taking his place among the rest of the doomed men. He did not survive the sinking, and his body was never recovered.

Unwilling to move to Haiti without her beloved husband, Juliette took the children and sailed back to France aboard the Chicago. That following December, she would give birth to a son, whom she named Joseph, Jr.

So, there we have it. Three heroic Black men aboard the most famous ship in all of history. One allegedly denied entrance, though not even in the same country at the time. One reinvented from a hateful and racist past and made into a symbol of defiance, forever to evolve with the Black experience. And finally, one very real, born well, only to die a hero. No extraordinary tale to tell here. Instead, there’s just a silent voice yet to be fully acknowledged.

Joseph Philippe Lemercier Laroche was the only Black man on the Titanic. A mythos was soon born, however, dictating how it was Jim Crow laws that prevented any Black people from boarding the ship at all. This mythos, created by contemporary African Americans, allowed them to claim not just one hero, but two. Sadly, however, Laroche was not among those celebrated in song or dance or poetry. No heroic deeds were afforded to any actual Black man that night, because no one knew of the Haitian man of good stock who saved his family before committing himself to eternity. Instead, all of the heroism would be attributed to the likes of Benjamin Guggenheim, Margaret “Molly” Brown, chief baker Charles Joughin, and so many others who either gave up their seats and let the waves consume them or physically helped women and children into the lifeboats. When facts are not there to fill in the blanks of history, it is legends that will more than suffice. And legends, as we all know, never die.

All in all, if one goes by contemporary geopolitical borders, there were 29 different countries represented on the Titanic. As anyone who knows anything about, or who has ever worked with, large and disparate groups of international people can tell you, the first things to usually be pointed out in such a patchwork of countries are the differences. Whether it’s because of clothing, speaking styles, or skin color, friendly jibes and jests inevitably result as the characteristics that cause one to stand out are immediately noticed before any kind of introduction can even take place. It is therefore strange that, in the endless pages of witness testimonies given during the subsequent investigative hearings following the sinking, no one mentioned anything about a Black family. Laroche’s story is only now becoming more well known.

Haitian American actress and activist Marlie Alberts, who is descended from Laroche, says how his life and death would make for thrilling storytelling if more people simply knew about it. “I want everybody to know that the Titanic was going to Haiti,” said Alberts, who wishes to bring more awareness to the current plight in her country, “and there was a Black man on board who wasn’t a slave or waiter or servant.”

Thanks to Alberts’ efforts, as well as those of historians who specialize in the early 20^th Century history of steamships, Black Americans, and Haiti herself can finally–and proudly–claim their long-lost and heroic son.