Newly analyzed video footage of a Chicago protest in 1963 could bolster Bernie Sanders’ claims to have been a long-time champion of civil rights.

Documentary project ’63 Boycott published video footage Monday under the headline “Is this Bernie Sanders being arrested?” The documentary’s website describes the footage as being from “an important protest in Englewood in the summer of 1963″ that was “one of the major precursors to the great boycott in October,” during which thousands protested the city schools’ segregationist policies.

In the footage, shown here courtesy of 63boycott.com, a bespectacled young man is seen being handcuffed. The film’s blog says the person shown may be Sanders, a current Democratic presidential candidate. Though – to be sure – the documentary’s producers have not confirmed the identity of the man:



Sanders’ record of activism took a hit last week when congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis endorsed Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton. “I never saw him, I never met him,” Lewis said during a press conference, when asked about the Vermont senator’s involvement in the civil rights movement. Lewis later clarified his comments, saying that he hadn’t intended to “disparage” Sanders’ activism.

“The fact that I did not meet him in the movement does not mean I doubted that Sen. Sanders participated in the Civil Rights Movement, neither was I attempting to disparage his activism,” Lewis said in a statement released through the Congressional Black Caucus PAC. “Thousands sacrificed in the 1960s whose names we will never know, and I have always given honor to their contribution.”