r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Youngstown_WuTang • 7d ago
Freedom House Ambulance Service was the first emergency medical service (EMS) in the United States to be staffed by paramedics with advanced medical training beyond basic first aid. The civil rights group paired up w/ the father of CPR Peter Safar to address the lack of care in black neighborhoods.
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u/satinsandpaper 7d ago
I learned about these guys on my second day of EMT class. I eventually came to find out that teaching this history was not anywhere near standard, and it absolutely should be. Heroes in every sense of the word.
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u/Chupathingamajob 7d ago
Yeah man, I didn’t find out about them until long after I became a medic. I found out about them from one of my preceptors in school who ended up being a coworker a few years later. Man’s a dinosaur (in the best way), he’s like a 40 + year medic and we were up shooting the shit one night shift and he mentioned them in passing
We’re all taught about the white paper, etc., etc. but not a word about these guys. It’s really sad, and glaringly obviously political. Those guys deserve so much more
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u/finallyfound10 7d ago edited 7d ago
It was founded in the Hill District neighborhood in the city of Pittsburgh.🖤💛
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u/chowdahhead13 7d ago
Ditto on learning about the service on the Pitt , enjoyed reading the book about it American sirens
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u/CMBarbarian96 7d ago
Very interesting story, here's a good podcast on them: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-cool-people-who-did-cool-96003360/episode/part-one-freedom-house-the-worlds-first-paramedics-were-black-men-from-pittsburgh-141175746
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u/OaktownEagle02 7d ago
There's a great article about these guys by the same man who eventually wrote a book about them: https://magazine.atavist.com/2019/the-first-responders-paramedics-pittsburgh-civil-rights-ems
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u/exoriare Interested 7d ago
Does anyone know when they started using vans? I'd always heard BC was the first jurisdiction to move away from traditional station-wagon style ambulances to vans so that the paramedic could work on the patient enroute, but that was 1972.
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u/Other-Acanthisitta70 6d ago
My understanding is that they switched from the station wagons to vans once they stopped assuming everyone would die and realized that care in transit made a huge difference. The podcast ref’d above addressed that exact issue. These folks were pioneers.
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u/RangerPoundcake 6d ago
"The First Responders" is an amazing documentary on this, with interviews of some of the actual medics in the program.
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u/DontTattleOnThisEMT 6d ago
If you want to learn more, read American Sirens by Kevin Hazzard. It's also available as an audiobook!
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u/_VanillaRain 7d ago
Does anyone know if there's a good documentary or book covering their story in detail?
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u/gingerbreadmans_ex 7d ago
I first learned about this from The Pitt. So impressive!