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 Rutha Blackburn. The couple, though slaves owned by different people, were married in Louisville in 1831. A few months after their marriage, Rutha was sold to another slave owner. Before she could be shipped off, however, Rutha fled Kentucky with her husband on July 3, 1831. The two settled down in the free, northern city of Detroit, Michigan. That fall, a white man from Louisville named Thomas J. Rogers visited Detroit. He ran into Thornton Blackburn and recognized him as a slave who had fled his town a few months prior. Thornton, on the other hand, did not recognize him,