On the night of 14 to 15 April 1912, the Titanic, the world's largest cruise ship wrecked after hitting an iceberg off Newfoundland. According to official figures, the ship was carrying 2,207 people, including at least 1,502 have perished drowned.

History records that among the passengers there was a black. This is thanks to the work of the journalist Serge Bilé, passionate about the history of black people and its diaspora, that through extensive research in Haiti, the United States and in France he found traces of this black, a Haitian engineer named Joseph Laroche.

The journalist of the book "The only black passenger on the Titanic" (Le seul passager noir du Titanic) launched Thursday, July 7 Miami, lets let the world know that Haitian and its history so far ignored.

(Excerpt) "Joseph Larcoche, born in 1866, came from a bourgeois family of Cap Haitien. His mother, who raised him alone, was a rich merchant. She wanted her son to do major studies in France and has therefore sent when he was 15 in a religious school in Beauvais. After obtaining his baccalaureate, Joseph became an engineer. Then he married a French, with whom he had two daughters. He obtained a first job as an engineer at North-South, one of the private companies in charge at the time of construction and operation of the Paris Metro. Face racism and discrimination of all kinds which he was victim, he finally decided to return to Haiti, his homeland, with his wife and two children. This is what explains his presence on the Titanic [...]"

IH/ iciHaiti