The Freedom House Ambulance Service was an emergency medical service (EMS) founded in 1967 to provide medical services to the predominantly African American Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The service was staffed entirely by African Americans. The Freedom House Ambulance Service was also the first EMS in the United States to be staffed by paramedics with medical training beyond first aid.
Prior to the Freedom House Ambulance Service, emergency transportation in Pittsburgh was often provided by the police or a local funeral home. The wait times for those needing transport were especially longer in the Hill District.
The Freedom House Ambulance Service was established in 1967 when Phil Hallen, a former ambulance driver and head of the Maurice Falk Fund, a grant-giving foundation for economics, education, medicine, and social welfare established by Maurice Falk in 1929, and Peter Safar, an Austrian anesthesiologist who is credited with pioneering cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Both saw the need for a service for the Hill District. Hallen contacted Freedom House Enterprises to help recruit paramedics for the new ambulance service. Twenty-five Black men were recruited from the Hill District for ambulance training. Most of these recruits were unemployed. Some were Vietnam Veterans, but some had not graduated from high school and others had criminal records. Safar designed the paramedics training, which included a 32-week 300-hour course on anatomy, physiology, CPR, advanced first aid, nursing, and defensive driving.
After receiving their training, the Freedom House paramedics began working following the Martin Luther King Assassination riots in Pittsburgh in April 1968. During their first year of operation, the Freedom House Ambulance Service responded to nearly 5,800 calls and transported more than 4,600 patients, primary in African American neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. According to data collected by Safar, the paramedics saved 200 lives in their first year of operations.
During a deadly surge in heroin use in the city in 1973, Freedom House paramedics were able to contact local drug dealers about user overdoses. They promised to provide medical assistance without legal repercussions for those who sold or used the drugs. This resulted in a drop in fatal overdoses in the city. The ambulance model designed by Safer and used by the Freedom House paramedics was adopted in 1975 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as the official ambulance standard for the United States.
Despite their successes, the Freedom House paramedics faced racism from hospital staff and patients. White patients would sometimes refuse to be helped by them. They also faced discrimination from the Pittsburgh city government and the then mayor, Peter F. Flaherty. When the Freedom House Ambulance Service requested an extension of their contract to provide medical care in other parts of the city, he refused. In 1974, Flaherty announced a citywide ambulance service to be staffed by non-police paramedics that became the Pittsburgh Bureau of Emergency Medical Services (PEMS). A year later, on October 15, 1975, the Freedom House Ambulance Service closed. By the late 1990s, 98% of the PEMS in the city of Pittsburgh were white.
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“Freedom House Ambulance Service,” 99% Invisible, https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/freedom-house-ambulance-service/;
“Freedom House Ambulance Service,” NPR, https://www.npr.org/2022/09/27/1124161896/at-freedom-house-these-black-men-saved-lives-paramedics-are-book-topic;
Kevin Hazzard, American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics, (New York: Hachette Books, 2022).
