In 1804, during Dessalines's massacre of the whites, Jean Zombi, a mulatto of Port-au-Prince, earned a reputation for brutality. Known to be one of the fiercest slaughterers, Madiou described his "vile face," "red hair," and "wild eyes." he would leave his house, wild with fury, stop a white, then strip him naked. In Madiou's words, he "led him then to the steps of the government palace and thrust a dagger in his chest. This gesture horrified all the spectators, including Dessalines." Jean Zombie was also mentioned by Henock Trouillot as one of the takos who had earlier thratened Dessalines in Plaisance. [...] The ambguities of traditions redefined by changing hopes, fears, and rememberings are exemplified by the brief mention of Jean Zombie in the 1950s by Milo Rigaud in La Tradition voudoo et le voudoo haitien. "Jean Zombi is one of the most curious prototypes of vodou tradition. He was one of those who, on Dessalines's order, massacred the most whites during the liberation of of Haiti from the French yoke. Jean Zombi is actually one of the most influential mysteries of the vodou pantheon: as lwa, he belongs to the Petwo rite."

• Haiti, History, and the Gods by Joan Dayan, 36

Okay, so there are a couple things going on here. There is general agreement that there was an individual called Jean Zombi who took part in the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804); he later became a figure in folklore and song, and became incorporated into vodou proceedings.

That being said, there is every indication that Jean Zombi was named after the existing vodou term zombi, in terms of a spirit or god, rather than the reverse. Accounts of zombies from the popularization of the idea in the 1920s and 30s with books like The Magic Island (1929) by William Seabrook don't mention Jean Zombi and the zombies that he does talk about aren't particularly noted for their violence. I've talked a little bit before about how reanimated corpses went from their vodou origins to their pop culture depiction, and you can read about that in Origins of pop-cultural obsession with Zombies? and How did the ghouls from Night of the Living Dead become universally known by the name "zombies"?

So in that sense, no, you can't trace a direct line from Jean Zombi to World War Z.

Is/ was the figure of the zombie linked to revolutionary/counter-revolutionary or racist narratives? As in the supposed out of control, liberated angry black revolutionary being reverted into a mindless, occasionally even remote controlled body without soul?

This is a bigger question, and one maybe better suited for r/AskSocialScience - Dayan certainly argues that the process of zombification, where a person's soul is taken from them and they are transported to work the cane fields as a lifeless corpse, is a metaphor for the Colonial slave experience in a nutshell. There are certainly racial tropes entwined with the whole experience of making and being a zombie, because of the nature of chattel slavery in the United States, and you can see that even in the film White Zombie (1932, inspired by Seabrook).