Freedom House Ambulance Service: A Pittsburgh (Black) History Lesson
It took me graduating high school, and finding a history professor that was actually passionate about what he was teaching to realize that I’m a history buff at heart. While my trips to the library or Barnes and Noble are exciting, let’s be real, in my pocket and on this laptop, I have access to an endless supply of resources, and I often find myself in a black hole of mostly useless information. However, sometimes the algorithms are spot on, almost as if my phone and/or laptop are reading my mind; as was the case with this documentary I found on WQED, a Pittsburgh PBS Station.
One of my favorite classes I have ever taken in school was African American History. Quite frankly, I’m lucky the little community college in my town offers it. With that in mind, I wanted to find something related to African American History, and the city of Pittsburgh, that I could familiarize myself with and share on this platform to commemorate Black History Month. Before I even began looking for a topic to cover, I came across an account on Twitter/X that referenced the Freedom House Ambulance Service, and after a quick Google search, I came across the aforementioned documentary. After watching it through, I was enthralled by what I had learned and decided to research it further. I cannot believe I didn’t know this story until last week.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s in Pittsburgh, city and state officials aimed to transform the city into a more popular business destination. This included cutting back on the smog created from the vast industrial work being done around the city, as well as erecting new buildings aimed at highlighting the art and culture the city of Pittsburgh has to offer. The city began with a new clean air initiative and the demolition of land near The Point to make way for the Gateway Center. Eventually, a significant chunk of the lower Hill District was taken via eminent domain to make room for the city’s new cultural center. This move displaced thousands of black families and hundreds of small, black-owned businesses. A racially segregated housing plan was then put into place providing displaced white families with government subsidies, allowing them to relocate to the suburbs. Displaced black families, on the other hand, were provided public housing.
As the civil rights movement began to heat up, the NAACP appointed James McCoy to combat discrimination against black people, particularly those in the Pittsburgh area. McCoy, then, established an organization called ‘Freedom House Enterprises’.
During that time, dedicated ambulance services, at least in the traditional sense that we recognize today, were few and far between in the United States. In the city of Pittsburgh, for example, city police and morgues were the ones that responded to calls relating to medical emergencies. It should come as a surprise to no one that the relationship between black people and the police at the time was tense, if not flat-out oppressive, in Pittsburgh. For black people, calling the police during an emergency was a gamble. Not only were police not trained beyond the most basic prehospital medical care, but many white police officers would simply not respond to emergency calls coming from predominantly black areas. In turn, many black people were unwilling to contact the police when medical attention was needed. Needless to say, the need for EMS responders was necessary, especially for black people in the Hill District.
Introducing Dr. Peter Safar. In an experiment conducted at Baltimore City Hospital, Safar proved that using exhale-air mouth-to-mouth breathing, one can provide enough oxygen for a victim that is otherwise unable to breath on their own, keeping them alive; a process known as cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). In lieu of these experiments, Safar went on to be dubbed the ‘father of CPR’. Safar, who lived in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, was looking for a platform to make CPR more mainstream, in hopes that the practice could be applied in the streets, by ordinary people, to save lives. He would eventually be introduced to Phil Hallen, who was a strong advocate for a private ambulance service, specifically in the Hill District. Together, the two of them recruited James McCoy, founder of Freedom House Enterprises, and, literally, drove around the Hill District handing out fliers to (largely) unemployed, uneducated black people. Their goal was to provide better employment opportunities for black people, combatting racism, and reinforce the fact that you didn’t have to be a physician to employ Dr. Safar’s ideas for prehospital medical care. In turn, they could provide better services to the Hill District, which needed it desperately.
In June 1968, a woman on a city bus in the Hill District had a seizure that rendered her unconscious. The Freedom House Ambulance service took their first call that day, and saved the woman’s life. At the time, these folks were, literally, the only trained EMTs in the United States, and most of them were “unemployable” black people.
As Freedom House responded to more calls and saved more lives, their systems were being copied all over the country. Freedom House became the first service to use many common life-saving practices outside a hospital setting, including, but not limited to, EKG, shock to the heart, and intubation. Even police officers, who initially viewed Freedom House as a threat to their job security, began to see the usefulness and effectiveness of what they were doing. With Freedom Houses’ reputation, and with the help of Dr. Nancy Caroline, their employees developed the first nationally recognized Ambulance/Paramedic program in the country’s history, which is still being used today.
As amazing a story as this is, you have to remember that this takes place in 1960s and 1970s America. Despite the revolutionary work they were doing, and the tremendous success Freedom House was having with this, largely experimental, service, it upset a lot of people in the Pittsburgh area that the poor and “uneducated” folks in the Hill District were receiving better emergency care than the upper and middle class white people in the city. Although Freedom House, to this point, had been funded by grants brought in by Phil Hallen, they were running out of money. This meant that they would need the support of the mayor and the city of Pittsburgh, in the form of funding, to remain in operation. Peter Flaherty, the mayor at the time, had expressed some hostility toward the Freedom House Ambulance Service, likely because he didn’t have any control over it. With the scrutiny from his constituents, and Freedom House’s lack of funding, Flaherty now had an opportunity to have control of it, and he took it. On October 15th, 1975, Freedom House Ambulance Service took their last call, before handing over control of its operations to the city. The company was disbanded and replaced with the City of Pittsburgh EMS.
While this isn’t the storybook ending straight out of a Hollywood movie, I think it’s important for Freedom House to not become a forgotten piece of history. With the help of Dr. Peter Safar, Dr. Nancy Caroline, and Phil Hallen, a group of uneducated, and otherwise “unemployable” black people helped create the National standard for EMS procedures that we still use to this day. This story proves that despite the societal barriers of the time, many of which are still in place today, brilliance knows no boundaries; sometimes all we need is an opportunity.
Today, Amera Gilchrist is the acting chief of the Pittsburgh Bureau of EMS. She is the first woman; more specifically, the first black woman in the history of the city to serve as EMS chief. She is the living and acting embodiment of what Freedom House aimed to do with their Ambulance service; maintaining a standard of excellence in emergency services regardless of neighborhood, race, gender, or any other identifying information you want to consider.
Happy Black History Month!
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