The Incredible True Story of the Black Men Who became America's First Paramedics
And why you probably never heard of them
It was 1971, the year of the pentagon papers and when Disney World opened. 10 years before the AIDS epidemic would begin and 50 years before I would receive my doctorate in pharmacy, which would lead me to writing this story for you today.
But for Mr. John Moon, 1971 would be the year that changed the trajectory of his life forever.
This historic time piece will be told through the eyes of Mr. John Moon.
At the end of the article you can enjoy an interview with John Moon himself, where he chats in depth with me about his gut wrenching, yet incredible life story, being part of Freedom House and more.
John Moon was 22 years old when he decided to pick up a second job at Montefiore Hospital in Pittsburgh as an orderly. The job wasn’t much - mainly shuffling patients to and from the surgery room and emptying bedpans. But the pay was decent, and he had a wife and a new baby at home, so he stuck with it.
This evening didn’t appear to be any different. John was preparing to wheel a patient from the surgery to their room when two men came barging through the hospital doors.
John looked up from his duties and saw the two men draped head to toe in white “like angels”. At first he thought the men were orderlies like him, but they had radios. John quickly leaned down to his patient and said, “I’ll be right back” and proceeded to follow these two men around the corner.
As soon as John turned the corner, he flattened himself against the wall to avoid being run down because now the men were rushing a patient on a stretcher down the corridor. As they did so, the men were receiving info from the nurse and shouting info back. In response, the nurse nodded at them and sprang into action. John was stunned - that nurse barely even looked him in the face in the months since he started working there.
There was something about these men. They were confident, moving with purpose and a knowing that they belonged here. John subconsciously followed the two men all the way outside of the hospital, not realizing where his feet were taking him. When John stood outside of the hospital doors, he inadvertently said out loud,
“Those are Black guys!”
“It was unheard of for Black men to wander into a hospital as if they owned the place, in a role they occupied and controlled.”
Two weeks later, two more men came into the hospital - not the same men, but from the same place. John recognized them by their white Nehru style jackets and radios. These men were zeroed in, working tirelessly to resuscitate a patient below them. Meanwhile, a doctor was taking orders from them.
John was bewildered and mesmerized at the same time, trying to puzzle out how the scene unfolding in front him was possible. His eyes drew away from the chaos and to the two badges sewn on their white jackets. The first one said “Freedom house ambulance” and the other across the breast pocket read “Paramedic”.
He repeated the word to himself, “Paramedic”. Jon had no idea what in God’s green Earth was a paramedic. All he knew was that he wanted to be one and he was going to do everything possible to make that happen.
The state of emergency medical services (EMS) in the United States at this time was chaotic and disorganized. There wasn’t even a name for people who worked in EMS yet. Ambulances were glorified taxis that simply hauled bodies from Point A to Point B. Often times the patient would be riding in the back alone with no one with them - a terrifying thought today. Depending on the state or area, police might even pick you up in a hearse. In The Hill district of Pittsburgh where John Moon was born, also called ‘The Bottom’, it was the police.
The Bottom residents rarely if at all called for EMS. There was no way they were getting thrown in the back of a police vehicle when they worked their entire lives to be out of one. The community didn’t trust the police and had good reason not to. Unfortunately, this made wait times for EMS noticeably longer in Black neighborhoods, resulting in higher death tolls.
Yet, this wasn’t unique to just The Bottom, Black communities all over the country didn’t feel comfortable calling EMS. They wanted to be taken care of by people that looked like them and who they could trust. The solution to all of the above would be Freedom House.
Fortune favors the bold and right time right place are the best phrases to describe the creation of Freedom House Ambulance Service. Dr. Peter Safar, also known as the ‘Father of CPR’ and widely believed to be one of the brightest physicians of our time, was looking to start a new kind of emergency service where you bring the ER to the patient. “Treatment should begin as soon as you reach the patient”, he said.
Safar wanted to train regular people with just a high school education, to deliver babies, handle cardiac arrests, trauma, hemorrhages, give IVs and intubate - a procedure that only physicians were allowed to perform in 1967.
Safar also went to great lengths to redesign the ambulance to be more efficient for treating patients right away. There needed to be enough room for two people in the back with the patient so that CPR could be performed uninterrupted, plus all the necessary medical equipment. This ambulance design would go on to be the blueprint for all ambulances to this day.
Everyone thought Safar was a nut. His physician colleagues found it blasphemous for Safar to even remotely suggest an “uneducated” person could do their job with any semblance of proficiency. It would never work, they said. It will never work. But, Safar was undeterred. It had to be regular people because the entire point was to show that anyone with proper training can do this job. It was the same logic Safar used for training a layperson in CPR. Doctors simply cannot be everywhere at once. The majority of the time, a member of the public happens upon the scene of an accident first, not a doctor.
If Safar did this right, they’d be able to replicate this EMS blueprint a thousand times all over the country and save so many lives. That’s when Freedom House Ambulance Service was born run by the world’s first Black paramedics servicing The Hill District in Pittsburgh and one of those paramedics would be John Moon.
Safar trained dozens of men from The Hill who had been discarded and labeled “unemployable” for years. Freedom House became about more than improving EMS, it also showed that it was inequality, not lack of ability that was holding African Americans back.
The first Freedom House EMS course was incredibly thorough. One historian remarked, “more training than any non-medical professional I’ve ever seen”.
Freedom House paramedics were known for their many “firsts” especially during the nation’s heroin epidemic in the 70s. Yet for the first time, probably ever, drug overdoses were rising in white neighborhoods and dropping in Black neighborhoods
This was not a coincidence.
Safar took a drug, which at that point was only used to reverse anesthesia and added it to the medical kit in the Freedom House ambulances, specifically for use in reversing drug overdoses. That drug is called Narcan or naloxone.
This was the first time naloxone was used to reverse an overdose and simultaneously the first time naloxone was ever used as part of EMS and that history was made by Black paramedics. And that was just one of many firsts
Freedom House paramedics were the first in the country to:
Intubate a patient on the street
Deliver an electric shock out on the field
Read and send an EKG while en route
Each time the state came up with an excuse to dismantle the program, Freedom House proved them wrong. Hospitals in Pittsburgh did an analysis on the 1400 pts that Freedom House paramedics serviced and found that FHP provided appropriate care 89% of the time compared to police - same study found that the police delivered the wrong care 62% of the time. But that didn’t come as a surprise, Freedom House paramedics were the only properly trained EMTs in the nation.
The real fruits of their labor came through when the University of Gutenberg did a presentation on Freedom House, which convinced a panel of experts from around the world that there is no evidence of reduced morbidity or mortality when advanced life support is conducted by physician-riding ambulances vs well-trained paramedics. This set the stage for the Freedom House Paramedic Program to be incorporated across the United States.
Despite Freedom House’s success, the service was disbanded due to politics and underlying racism after 8 years of wonderful service to Black communities. 98% of the original Freedom House paramedics were let go after the dismantling, despite the new EMS service verbally agreeing to keep everyone on. They had discovered a loophole and replaced everyone with nearly an all white staff. I say nearly because John Moon was one of two Black paramedics that continued on with the Pittsburgh EMS, formerly Freedom House Ambulance Service, for 50 years until his retirement. He dedicated the rest of his paramedic career to fighting for more diversity in EMS.
It is a sad moment to know that vital stories like these that weave the fabric of American history have been pushed to the wayside, or worse, intentionally erased.
Freedom House Ambulance Service were medical pioneers pushing the boundaries of the final frontier of not just healthcare, but equality during a time when there seemed little of it to go around.
This article is a snapshot of my talk with John Moon himself. My conversation with him will leave you feeling inspired, awestruck, empowered and perhaps a tad bit weepy. Enjoy ~
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