HONORING THE REVEREND RUDOLPH "RUDY" ALLEN

On 2026-10-09, Representative Sanford D. Bishop, Jr. (D-GA-2) delivered a floor speech titled "HONORING THE REVEREND RUDOLPH "RUDY" ALLEN" in the House.

HONORING THE REVEREND RUDOLPH "RUDY" ALLEN

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 159 (Friday, October 9, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 159 (Friday, October 9, 2026)] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages E1045-E1046] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] HONORING THE REVEREND RUDOLPH ``RUDY'' ALLEN ______ HON. SANFORD D. BISHOP, JR. of georgia in the house of representatives Friday, October 9, 2026 Mr. BISHOP. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a man whose life has been a sermon, whose courage has been a testimony, and whose friendship has been one of the great blessings of my own life--the Reverend Rudolph ``Rudy'' Allen of Columbus, Georgia. On Friday, October 9, 2026, family, friends, and admirers will gather at St. Luke Ministry to celebrate his 90th birthday and to officially launch a foundation bearing his name, so that the work he began as a young man will outlive us all. Rudy Allen was born into a Columbus that did not want him to be free. He grew up in the 1940s and 1950s in a city divided by law and by custom--separate water fountains, separate schools, separate seats, and separate dreams. He graduated from Spencer High School in 1954, the very year the Supreme Court declared in Brown v. Board of Education that separate could never be equal. But the decision on paper had not yet reached the streets of Columbus, and young Rudy Allen would spend his life helping to carry it there. He answered the call to ministry and went to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend seminary. It was 1960, and history was waiting for him at a lunch counter. Alongside a young man named John Lewis--who would later become my colleague and my friend in this very chamber--Rudy Allen sat down at counters where he was not welcome, in order to stand up for a people who were not free. He was pushed. He was spat upon. He was arrested twice. And he later said that it was there, in Nashville, that he ``caught fire'' for civil rights. Mr. Speaker, that fire has never gone out. When he returned home to Columbus, he did not come back to rest. He came back to lead. He was arrested again in his hometown, and he led the boycott that integrated the public buses of Columbus--so that the sons and daughters of domestic workers, mill hands, and laborers could sit wherever they pleased, and ride with their head held high. Every person who boards a city bus in Columbus today and takes any open seat without a second thought is riding on the sacrifice of Rudy Allen. His work for justice did not stop at the bus stop. Reverend Allen served on the ad hoc committee, alongside Bill Turner and other committed community leaders, that helped bring the Urban League to Columbus--opening doors to jobs, education, housing, and economic opportunity that are still changing lives in the Chattahoochee Valley today. He understood that the right to sit anywhere on the bus meant little without a good job to ride it to. Rudy Allen was just 19 years old when he first stood to preach the Gospel, and he has not stopped since--more than seventy years of proclaiming the Word. And through it all, he was a shepherd to God's people in his hometown. In October 1961, still a young man with the fire of Nashville burning in his bones, he took up the pastor's staff at Macedonia Baptist Church, serving there until 1963. In June 1967, he was called as Senior Pastor of Greater Shady Grove Baptist Church, where he labored faithfully for more than thirteen years, until October 1980. The very next month, in November 1980, he founded Revelation Missionary Baptist Church and began the longest chapter of his ministry as its founding Senior Pastor--nearly a quarter of a century of preaching, praying, and pastoring, until December 2004. And when most men would long since have laid their burdens down, he heard the call once more and answered it, serving as Senior Pastor of Canaan Baptist Church from January 2011 through December 2013. Four congregations. One city, More than seven decades of preaching-- and every pulpit he ever pastored was in Columbus, Georgia, the very hometown that once told him where he could not sit, and that he spent his whole life teaching to make room for everyone. He has married the young, buried the old, comforted the grieving, visited the sick, and told generation after generation that they were somebody in the sight of God. He has preached from pulpits, and he has preached with his life--which is the only sermon that never ends. Mr. Speaker, no man carries a cross like that alone. For every mile of that journey, Rudy Allen had at his side his beloved wife of more than six decades, Gloria. When the jail doors closed and the threats came, when the church meetings ran long and the nights ran longer, when the burdens of the ministry grew heavy, Gloria held him up--in prayer, in patience, and in love. She was the quiet strength behind the pulpit and the steady hand behind the man. In 2022, God called Gloria home, and a part of Rudy's heart went with her. But the love she poured into him did not leave this earth--it lives on in the family they built, in the churches they served together, and in every life this new foundation will touch. On Friday evening, when Rudy's name is lifted up at St. Luke, I believe Gloria will be looking down from glory, smiling, and saying, ``Well done.'' Together they raised a family that is itself a living testament to his faith: the Reverend Rudy Allen, Jr.; the Reverend Valerie Thompson; Kathy Dowdell; the Reverend Vince Allen; Tonya Meadows; the Reverend Marla Allen; and the Reverend Denitra Hardnett. Five of his seven children answered the call to preach--following their father's footsteps into the pulpit, so that the Gospel he proclaimed in Columbus now rings out through his own sons and daughters. When Reverend Allen stepped away from the pulpit of Revelation Missionary Baptist Church, the church he founded, he did what the great ones do--he passed the baton. His daughter, the Reverend Valerie Thompson, took it up as Pastor of that same congregation, and today she also serves as Chief of Staff of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., under the leadership of its President, the Reverend Dr. Boise Kimber, carrying her father's ministry to a national stage. And the legacy rolls on through fifteen grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and four great, great-grandchildren--five generations who will grow up knowing that their patriarch once sat down so that they could stand tall. Earlier this year, at 89 years of age, Reverend Allen walked through the History Gallery of the Columbus Museum and looked upon the story of his own city--the injustices he endured and the barriers he helped tear down. He did not speak with bitterness. He spoke with candor about the past and with hope for the future. That is who Rudy Allen is: a man who has seen the worst of what people can do to one another, and still believes in the best of what we can become. Mr. Speaker, I must also speak personally. Rudy Allen is not only a hero of the movement--he is my friend. Some of the sweetest hours of my life have been spent with him on the golf course. Golf is a humbling game, and Rudy has always played it the way he has lived: with patience, with good humor, with an honest count of every stroke, and with grace for a friend who finds the woods a little more often than he would like. Between the tee and the green, I have heard wisdom from Rudy Allen that no seminary could teach and no law book could hold. He has reminded me, more than once, that the game is not won by the long drive but by keeping your head down, staying the course, and finishing what you start. He has done exactly that- with his life. Mr. Speaker, my late friend and colleague, Congressman John Lewis-- who sat `in at those Nashville lunch counters alongside Rudy Allen more than six decades ago--left this nation a charge: ``Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.'' If ever a life answered that charge, it is the life of Rudy Allen. He made noise for justice in Nashville and in Columbus. He got into good trouble in jail cells and on city buses. And he has spent every day since making the kind of necessary trouble that comforts the disturbed, disturbs the comfortable, and moves a whole community a little closer to the Promised Land. There are men who read about history, and there are men who make it. Then there are rare men like Rudy Allen, who make history and then spend the rest of their lives quietly making sure the next generation is ready to make some of their own. That is why this foundation matters. It is not a monument to what he has done. It is a promise about what will still be done--in his name, by young people who will never have to sit in the back of a bus, because Rudy Allen refused to. Mr. Speaker, the old saints used to say, ``Give me my flowers while I yet live.'' Ninety years is a long time to walk with God, and ninety years is a long time to keep the faith. On this milestone birthday, we gather not to mourn, but to say thank you while he can still hear it. I thank Reverend Allen for the jail cells [[Page E1046]] he entered so that others could walk free. I thank him for the bus seats he claimed so that others could ride with dignity. I thank him for every sermon, every prayer, every round of golf, and every word of encouragement. I thank him for being a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join my wife, Vivian, and me along with the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's Second Congressional District in honoring the Reverend Rudolph ``Rudy'' Allen--preacher, pioneer, foot soldier for freedom, and faithful friend--in wishing him a joyous 90th birthday, and in celebrating the launch of his foundation. May God continue to bless him, keep him, and give him many more years of good health, good fellowship, and good golf. ____________________