 During and after the Reconstruction, Douglass remained deeply concerned about the prospect that the U.S. would compromise on the civil and human rights of black Americans. He became increasingly concerned about the denial of black civil rights and the rising waves of anti-black violence. He, thus, criticized the growing practice of black peonage in agriculture, and over time he expressed sympathy with blacks who were fleeing the American South, although he did not support the black Exodus  (see Section 6).  He did not support the Exodus as a policy because he judged it bad for black labor, and that it did not address the institutional problems that caused the Exodus: peonage and exploitation, unequal justice, unrestrained violence, lack of resources and opportunities, and in particular, education. He received a great deal of criticism for his position for failing to support the individual choices of black Americans who sought to flee the inhospitable, degrading, and deadly conditions in the American South. He also criticized inequitable and unfair treatment of blacks in state criminal justice systems, in particular criticizing the Convict-Lease system (Davis 1999). And he joined with Ida B. Wells (1862–1931) in raising alarm over the growing practice of anti-black lynching in the United States (Wells-Barnett 2002; see also Lott’s “Frederick Douglass on the Myth of the Black Rapist”, in Lott 1999) He saw America’s failure to support the civil rights, and the very lives, of black Americans as indicative of its moral and political failure, and as evidence as he provocatively claimed that the Emancipation was a stupendous fraud. Douglass’s later-day activities are an important and impressive part of his record and life, and indeed a part of the evolving debates in African American philosophy and critical theory about the carceral society (Davis 1999). Notably, Angela Davis, who was a pioneer of Douglass research in philosophy in the United States, has lead the inquiry in this area; her scholarship continues to be ground-breaking, not only in relation to Douglass’s early role in this debate, but also on the issue of criminal justice, punishment, and incarceration in philosophy.