Both the home and diaspora populations have produced a number of individuals who have had a notable influence on modern African, Caribbean and Western societies; they include political activists such as Marcus Garvey and C. L. R. James; writers and theorists such as Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon; US military leader and statesman Colin Powell; athletes such as Usain Bolt, Tim Duncan and David Ortiz; and musicians Bob Marley, Nicki Minaj and Rihanna.

This increasing demand for African labour in the Caribbean was in part the result of massive depopulation of the native Taíno and other Indigenous peoples caused by the new infectious diseases, harsh conditions, and warfare brought by European colonists.

By the mid-16th century, the slave trade from West Africa to the Caribbean was so profitable that Francis Drake and John Hawkins were prepared to engage in piracy as well as break Spanish colonial laws, in order to forcibly transport approximately 1500 enslaved people from Sierra Leone to Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic).

Inspired by French revolutionary sentiments which pronounced all men free and equal, Toussaint L'Ouverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines led the Haitian Revolution.

During the 19th century, continuous waves of rebellion, such as the Baptist War, led by Sam Sharpe in Jamaica, created the conditions for the incremental abolition of slavery in the region by various colonial powers.

During the 20th century, Afro-Caribbean people, who were a majority in many Caribbean societies, began to assert their cultural, economic, and political rights with more vigor on the world stage.