Johnson's voting record--a record twenty years long, dating back to his arrival in the House of Representatives in 1937 and continuing up to that very day--was consistent with the accent and the word. During those twenty years, he had never supported civil rights legislation--any civil rights legislation. In Senate and House alike, his record was an unbroken one of votes against every civil rights bill that had ever come to a vote: against voting rights bills; against bills that would have struck at job discrimination and at segregation in other areas of American life; even against bills that would have protected blacks from lynching.