Harry Belafonte has endorsed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for president, NBC News has learned.
The singer and songwriter who was active in the Civil Rights Movement and close with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. released a video Thursday detailing his endorsement that was given exclusively to NBC News.
“I would suggest to those of you who have not yet made up your minds, or maybe even some of you who have made up your minds, to maybe consider and reconsider what it is that Bernie Sanders offers,” Belafonte said in a video endorsing Sanders. “He offers us a chance to declare unequivocally that there is a group of citizens who have a deep caring for where are nation goes and what it does in the process of going.”
Belafonte met with Sanders in New York on Wednesday, the day after he overwhelmingly beat challenger Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary.
As the race moves to South Carolina, where 55 percent of Democratic voters in 2008 - the last major primary contest for Democrats - are African American, both Clinton and Sanders have been working to shore up as much black support as possible.
Clinton won the endorsement of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Tuesday while influential writer Ta-Nehisi Coates said he would be voting for Sanders.
