PITTSBURGH (AP) — President Barack Obama pardoned a former Pittsburgh city councilman’s 46-year-old federal gun charge.

Seventy-three-year-old Sala Udin says he filed a formal request for clemency four years ago and had given up hope when he was surprised on Monday.

The civil rights advocate served seven months of a five-year sentence on charges of illegally transporting firearms and untaxed alcohol.

Udin was driving to Pittsburgh from Mississippi, a state he first visited as a Freedom Rider, when he was pulled over in Kentucky in 1970. The officer found an unloaded rifle and a jug of moonshine in Udin’s vehicle.

The ex-councilman, who served from 1995 to 2005, has received pardons for various criminal charges he accrued between 1968 and 1970.