Famous Caribbean Americans

The following is a partial list of some famous Caribbean Americans in a variety of professional fields. Can you think of any others? Add to the list by leaving a comment below.

• Harry Belafonte is an American of Jamaican and Martiniquan descent who is a singer, actor, and social activist.
• The Hon. Prof Anthony Chen OM – Atmospheric Physics is a member of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
• Edwidge Danticat is a famous Haitian American writer of such books like The Farming of the Bones and Kric? Krac?.
• W.E.B. Dubois was an American Civil Rights Leader whose parents migrated from Haiti.
• Alexander Hamilton (born on the island of Nevis), was the first Secretary of the Treasury and founder of the First Bank of the United States.
• Ben Gordon, Charlotte Bobcats shooting guard, was born of Jamaican parents.
• Kelsey Grammer, Emmy-winning actor, well known for his role as Frasier, was born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.
• Beyonce Knowles’ father Mathew is Bahamian.
• Lenny Kravitz, singer, musician and actor, was born to a Bahamian mother.
• Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet who was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance.
• Nicki Minaj, rapper, singer and songwriter, was born Onika Tanya Maraj in Saint James, Trinidad.
• Colin Powell, former Secretary of State, was born to Jamaican immigrants.
• Sanya Richards Ross, four-time Olympic gold champion in track & field, was born in Kingston, Jamaica.
• Rihanna, singer and actress, was born in Saint Michael, Barbados.
• Cicely Tyson is an Emmy-award winning and Academy Award-nominated actress whose parents emigrated from the island of Nevis.
• Kerry Washington, star of TV’s Scandal has said that her mother is from a “mixed-race background but from Jamaica," so she is partly English and Scottish and native American, but also descended from African slaves in the Caribbean.