Barbara Castle Barbara Castle Barbara Anne Castle, Baroness Castle of Blackburn, PC, GCOT ("née" Betts; 6 October 1910 – 3 May 2002) was a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for Blackburn from 1945 to 1979, making her the longest-serving female MP in the history of the House of Commons until that record was broken in 2007 by Gwyneth Dunwoody. She later became the Member of the European Parliament for Greater Manchester from 1979 to 1989 and subsequently a member of the House of Lords, having been granted a life peerage in 1990. One of the most significant
The Blackburn Riots The Blackburn Riots The Blackburn riots occurred during the summer of 1833 in Detroit, Michigan. They were the first race riots in the history of the city. The riots were spurred by the imprisonment of Thornton and Rutha Blackburn, an African American couple that had escaped slavery in Louisville, Kentucky in 1831. They were caught by slave catchers, thrown in jail, and sentenced to be returned to their owners in Kentucky. This ruling angered the African American population of Detroit. Rutha Blackburn was smuggled out by two African American women, and the following day, a mob formed outside the jail,