Caribbean Americans are a multi-ethnic and multi-racial group that trace their ancestry further in time to Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

[3] The largest Caribbean immigrant sources to the U.S. are Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados.

First people from West Indies who arrived in the United States were slaves brought to South Carolina in the 17th century.

[3] These slaves, many of whom were born in Africa, number among the first people of African origin imported to the British colonies of North America.

Although migration from the West Indies to the United States was not very important in the first years of 19th century, it grew considerably after the end of the American Civil War in 1865, which brought about the abolition of slavery.

[4] In the 19th century the U.S. attracted many Caribbean craftsmen, scholars, teachers, preachers, doctors, inventors, clergy, (the Barbadian Joseph Sandiford Atwell was the first black man after the Civil War to be ordained in the Episcopal Church),[5] comedians (as the Bahamian Bert Williams), politicians (as Robert Brown Elliott, U.S.

Congressman and Attorney General of South Carolina), poets, songwriters, and activists (as the brothers James Weldon and John Rosamond Johnson).

[3] About half of the population of the New Orleans area have at least distant partial Haitian ancestry originating from a migration wave before and after the Haitian Revolution from the late 1700s up until 1850, of many mixed people, black African slaves and their white French slave masters, and later free black people [citation needed].

The Haitian Revolution itself resulted in France selling a large swath of land (Louisiana Purchase) to the United States.

The Caribbean migration grew during the first thirty years of the 20th century and by 1930 there were almost 100,000 West Indian people living in the United States.

When the World War II came to an end, American companies hired thousands of Caribbean people, which were known as “W2 workers”.

Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, the Bahamas, Barbados and Saint Lucia, among others, also have significant immigrant populations within the United States.

Florida had the largest number of resident West Indian (excluding Hispanic origin groups) immigrants in 2016, followed by New York with 490,826 according to the US census.

Areas in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Georgia do have significant and growing West Indian communities but are heavily overshadowed by much larger populations of native-born American Blacks.

The Caribbean people brought music, such as bachata, cadence rampa, calypso, chutney, compas (kompa), cumbia, dancehall, filmi, Latin trap, méringue, merengue, parang, ragga, rapso, reggae, reggaeton, salsa, ska, soca and zouk, which has a profound impact on U.S. popular culture.

[20][21][22] Cultural expressions and the prominence of first-and second-generation Caribbean figures in U.S. labor and grassroots politics for many decades also testify to the long tradition and established presence.

71, sponsored by Congresswoman Barbara Lee, recognizing the significance of Caribbean people and their descendants in the history and culture of the United States.

[24] Since the declaration, the White House has issued an annual proclamation recognizing June as National Caribbean-American Heritage Month.