Civil rights leader John Lewis softened his dismissal of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ work in the 1960s on behalf of racial equality.

Lewis, a Georgia congressman who has endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race, had said about Sanders’ role in the movement: “I never saw him. I never met him.”

Two days later on Saturday, he felt compelled to clarify his remarks “in the interest of unity.”

“The fact that I did not meet him in the movement does not mean I doubted that Sen. Sanders participated,”Lewis said, and “neither was I attempting to disparage his activism.”

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