Former slaves openly defied returning white owners who still viewed them as property

Evidence

Descourtilz discovered this firsthand when he traveled to a plantation that had been owned by members of his family. The former slaves who were renting the plantation clearly wanted nothing to do with him; they “pushed their audacious impudence” so far as to refuse to let him and those he was traveling with forage on the property for a few bits of food. “How many times during this unfortunate epoch,” he lamented, laying bare his conviction that those who now lived on the plantations were still nothing more than property, “did we, the owners of five leagues of land and 750 blacks, have to serve ourselves!” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 799