Black Men Created America’s First Paramedics. Freedom House’s Hidden History

America's first paramedic service, Freedom House, was established in 1966 in Pittsburgh's predominantly Black Hill District. This initiative was a collaboration between Dr. Peter Safar, who invented CPR and developed the first paramedic curriculum, and Jim McCoy, a civil rights activist. McCoy's non-profit, Freedom House, initially aimed to create job opportunities for 'unemployable' Black residents, leading to the recruitment of young Black men, including military veterans, high school dropouts, and graduates, who were seeking a way to make their mark.

Founded in 1966 in Pittsburgh, the predominately Black Hill district. Dr. Peter Saffer, looks across at Jim McCoy... the world's first paramedics are going to be black men from the Hill District.

Before Freedom House, pre-hospital emergency care in the U.S. was virtually non-existent or dangerously inadequate. Services were often provided by funeral homes (using hearses for transport) or untrained police officers in paddy wagons, who lacked equipment, training, and often, compassion. A 1965 report highlighted that one was more likely to survive a gunshot wound in Vietnam (due to trained corpsmen) than in the U.S., where avoidable traumatic deaths were an epidemic.

It depended on where you live. There are some cities where it might be a volunteer fire department. There's some places where it was a funeral home... In the city of Pittsburgh, what you had was a police born ambulance service... They had no equipment. They had no training. They had no ability to do anything but take you to the hospital. In fact, they didn't even ride with you.

Despite Dr. Safar's persistent advocacy and personal tragedy (his daughter died from an asthma attack due to inadequate emergency care), the city of Pittsburgh initially refused to fund a paramedic force. The turning point came in November 1966 when former Pittsburgh Mayor and Pennsylvania Governor David Lawrence suffered a fatal heart attack at a public rally. Although a nurse initiated CPR, the arriving police ambulance crew stopped care, and Lawrence died. This highly publicized death, witnessed by thousands and covered extensively by media, exposed the city's dire lack of healthcare infrastructure, finally compelling officials to approve Safar's paramedic program.

What mattered was that a very famous man died and the city saw for itself. Thousands of people witnessed it firsthand... Everybody knew that David Lawrence died because the city was lacking in its healthcare infrastructure. So finally they turned to saffron and they said fine if you want to do this thing go ahead and do it.

Freedom House paramedics were pioneers, implementing innovations like the first use of Narcan for opioid overdoses, designing modern ambulance layouts, and establishing comprehensive training programs that became national and international standards. In 1975, President Gerald Ford even selected Freedom House as a national model for EMS. However, the city of Pittsburgh, driven by racism and jealousy over the success of a Black-led initiative, shut down Freedom House. They refused to integrate the experienced Black paramedics into a new citywide program, instead hiring new, inexperienced white staff and actively making conditions miserable for any Freedom House medics who transferred.

Freedom House was chosen to serve as a national standard. Their medical director, a doctor by the name of Nancy Caroline, wrote a textbook based on her work there. And that textbook is used to this day to train people all over the world... The reason they were shut down is because a couple years earlier there had been a heroin epidemic in Pittsburgh... Freedom House paramedics are the first people in the world to use Narcan to reverse a heroin overdose... People see, wait a minute, this this incredible thing that's happening, but it's happening there and it's happening to them and it's not happening to me. Why? and they get very angry and they turn to the mayor... he gets new doctors and they recruit all new people, none of whom have any experience whatsoever on an ambulance. And he starts his own program. And it's perhaps not a coincidence that the paramedics that they roll out look nothing like the paramedics from Freedom House.