Although the coexistence of enslaved and free Afrodescendants made it difficult to identify and control those who were enslaved, Nova Scotia displayed the characteristics of a slave society. The Black Loyalists were largely landless and often reduced to share-cropping or indentured servitude; suffering from inadequate government support (including rations), they were forced into competition in the labour market, were subjected to pervasive racism and prejudice - including an anti-Black race riot led by White soldiers at Shelburne in July 1784 - and faced the threat of being resold into slavery in the United States of America or the Caribbean. They were also denied the rights of citizenship, including trial by jury, the right to vote and equal treatment in the courts - which sometimes sentenced them to whipping akin to the punishment imposed on their enslaved brethren. Under these circumstances, many within the Black Loyalist communities began to look elsewhere for their promised land.  
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[^0]:    5 Resorting to petitions, delayed by years and repeatedly relocated, a small number of the Black Loyalists finally established Black settlements in Birchtown, Brindley Town and Little Tracadie (in the only lands granted directly to free Black people); others were concentrated in Preston and Halifax, while others, landless, were scattered in Lunenburg, Wilmot, Cornwallis, St. Margaret's Bay, Granville and Port L'Hebert.
6 Winks points to the multiple advertisements for runaways and argues that the enslaved were treated as property and 'continued to die young' (Winks, 2000, p. 53).