(CNN) Rep. John Lewis acknowledges that the country has made progress since his time as a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. However, he fears that this hard-won progress could be in peril.

"We have come a distance. We made progress. But there are forces in America trying to slow us down or take us back," Lewis told David Axelrod on a special televised edition of "The Axe Files," airing Friday at 10 p.m. ET on CNN.

One of those forces, Lewis suggested, is the President of the United States.

"I think the person we have in Washington today is uncaring," Lewis said, adding that he believes President Donald Trump "knows very, very little about the struggle and the history of the Civil Rights Movement."

The Georgia Democrat is intimately familiar with that history. Lewis was known as one of the "Big Six" civil rights leaders , serving as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and working alongside other prominent figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was nearly killed while marching for civil rights in Selma, Alabama, on "Bloody Sunday" in 1965.

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