Bernie Sanders' Arrest at Civil Rights Protest Caught on Film

He was a 21-year-old University of Chicago student at the time
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 20, 2016 12:04 PM CST
Bernie Sanders' Arrest at Civil Rights Protest Caught on Film
Still from a video showing the arrest of a 21-year-old Bernie Sanders during a 1963 civil rights protest in Chicago's South Side.   (Vimeo)

Bernie Sanders was arrested. Well, he was arrested 53 years ago, anyway. The Chicago Tribune discovered photographic evidence of Sanders' involvement in the fight for racial equality this week in the form of a negative from its archives showing a bespectacled Sanders being hauled away by police during a 1963 protest in Chicago's South Side. The New York Times reports there's also video from the same incident that was released Monday by Kartemquin Films, which is making a documentary about the protests. "Bernie identified it himself," a senior Sanders advisor tells the Tribune regarding the photo. "He looked at it…and he said, 'Yes, that indeed is (me).'" He also specifically remembered the watch he was wearing in the video of the arrest.

Sanders was 21 and a student at the University of Chicago, where he would graduate with a degree in political science, at the time. He was charged with resisting arrest and fined $25. The protest was part of many against Chicago's practice of sending black students to school in trailers rather than putting them into white schools. The Times states Sanders has faced attacks from Clinton's campaign over his civil rights bonafides. And the Tribune believes this new evidence "bolsters the candidate's narrative about his civil rights activism." The photo and video could end up helping Sanders in the upcoming South Carolina primary, where he needs more support among black voters, according to Time. Sanders was a leader with the Congress of Racial Equality while at the University of Chicago and led a number of protests against inequality. (More Bernie Sanders stories.)

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