Trailblazing EMTs
A Black paramedic training program in 1970s Pittsburgh set the standards for modern emergency response in the United States.

Caliguiri and Curto Family Papers and Photographs, 2019.0215, Detre Library and Archives, Senator John Heinz History Center; © Gene Starzenski/Freedom House Street Saviors documentary
This photo was taken in Pittsburgh on June 16, 1968, the first day of the Freedom House Ambulance Service. Both photos in this article were featured in a 2009 documentary called Freedom House: Street Saviors.
Prior to the 1970s, ambulances weren’t the standard for transporting sick or injured people to hospitals. Police cars, or even hearses—cars used to transport coffins during funerals—would help in an emergency, but the patients would not receive treatment on the way. As a result, many people died on the way to the nearest hospital.
The situation was even worse in the Hill District, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The city’s police force frequently ignored or delayed calls for emergency transportation to the hospital, leaving Black patients without swift care. So in the 1960s, the community decided to start an ambulance service. Called the Freedom House Ambulance Service, it was the first emergency medical service (EMS) in the United States.
In 1967, a nonprofit organization called Freedom House Enterprises partnered with the hospital to create a paramedic training course and ambulance service to respond to emergencies in the Hill District. The program had five ambulances and recruited new emergency responders to take an eight-month course where they learned how to provide life-saving care on the way to the hospital.
It’s estimated that in Freedom House’s first year of service, the paramedics transported more than 4,600 patients and saved about 200 lives, according to data from Peter Safar, the Pittsburgh doctor who designed the training program.

Maurice Falk Medical Fund Records, MSS 207, Detre Library and Archives, Senator John Heinz History Center; © Gene Starzenski/Freedom House Street Saviors Documentary
This 1970s photo features the employees of the Freedom House Ambulance Service.
The Freedom House paramedics provided much-needed medical care and built trust with the residents of the Hill District.
“Oftentimes, when a person would call for assistance, they would say, ‘Don’t send the police, send Freedom House,’” said John Moon, one of the Freedom House paramedics, in an interview with NPR.
The Freedom House Ambulance Service ended in 1975 because the city cut funding for the program, saying it would be part of a larger EMS department. Many of the trained Black paramedics, despite being trailblazers in the field, were forced out of the new, mostly white EMS program.
Though it lasted only a few years, the Freedom House service innovated the field of emergency care in the U.S. The program produced leaders in emergency medicine, like Moon, who went on to become the assistant chief of the EMS division in Pittsburgh. Freedom House’s medical director, Nancy Caroline, wrote the first national curriculum on emergency street medicine for the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Ronald Stewart, a medical director for Pittsburgh’s Public Safety department in the 1970s, told NPR, “They were the first true paramedic program in the world.”
Did You Know?
The word ambulance has French origins, meaning “mobile.” In the late 1700s, the French army transported wounded soldiers to hospitals on a type of horse-drawn wagon called a “flying ambulance.”

X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO, NASA/JPL/Caltech/NuStar; Optical: NASA/STScI/HST; IR: NASA/STScI/JWST, NASA/JPL/CalTech/SST; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt, N. Wolk, and K. Arcand
A “flying ambulance” from the 1700s
The King of Cool

© Nature and Science/Alamy, © Bettmann/Getty Images; Photo composite Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
(Left) Frederick McKinley Jones works on a design. (Right) Jones poses with a model of the refrigerated railroad car he invented.
The next time you enjoy some fresh strawberries in winter, you can thank Frederick McKinley Jones, the inventor of portable refrigeration. Because of Jones, food can be shipped from around the world at any time of the year.
Jones was a Black man born in 1893. He grew up near Cincinnati, Ohio, but by the age of 19 he made his way to Hallock, Minnesota, a city near the U.S.-Canadian border. He showed talent as a mechanic and even got into car racing. Eventually, he became a self-taught engineer and built a transmitter for Hallock’s radio station.
In 1939, while working as the chief engineer for the U.S. Thermo-Control Company, Jones filed a patent for the first refrigerated transportation system. He improved the design in 1941, developing the Model C refrigeration unit. The U.S. military used Jones’s refrigeration units during World War II to help transport blood plasma and medicine for wounded soldiers. Portable refrigeration could keep these items cold on boats, planes, and trucks during travel.
After the war, the agriculture industry started using the Model C to bring ripe crops to supermarkets across the country. Before the portable refrigeration unit, food was kept cool using ice and salt, which didn’t uniformly cool the food and was not always reliable. Jones’s invention cooled and circulated the air in the transportation compartment, keeping the food fresh.
By this time, Thermo-Control Company had changed its name to Thermo King. The company is still a major temperature-control transportation company today.
In his lifetime, Jones received more than 60 patents for his inventions, many of which were dedicated to refrigeration. Jones died in 1961, and he was posthumously (after his death) awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1991.
Today, portable refrigeration not only keeps food fresh but is also used to transport medicine, vaccines, flowers, and art.
Celebrate Juneteenth!

Dylan Buell/Getty Images
Juneteenth celebrations, like this one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, are held all over the United States.
Celebrated each year on June 19, Juneteenth is a U.S. holiday that commemorates the day in 1865 that news of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached Texas and the last enslaved people learned that they were free.
Read more about this national holiday at Britannica.
WORD OF THE DAY
vanguard
noun
: the group of people who are the leaders of an action or movement in society, politics, art, etc.
