In the late 1960s, Pittsburgh’s Hill District was a historic Black neighborhood — culturally rich, economically battered.
Urban renewal had displaced families and shuttered businesses. Hospitals were distant. Emergency transport was often handled by funeral homes or police wagons with little medical training. In Black neighborhoods across America, ambulance service frequently meant delay without treatment.
People were dying not only from injury —
but from the absence of care.
In 1967, that absence met resistance.
Out of the Hill District came the Freedom House Ambulance Service — one of the first professionally trained paramedic units in the United States.
Under the medical vision of Peter Safar, a pioneer of CPR and modern resuscitation, and through the clinical leadership of Nancy Caroline, Freedom House became more than an experiment.
Nancy Caroline did not observe from a distance.
She wrote curriculum.
She rode in the ambulances.
She trained the men personally.
She demanded mastery.
She helped build one of the nation’s first structured paramedic training programs and later authored Emergency Care in the Streets, a foundational EMS textbook used across the country and internationally.
The standards were not lowered for the Hill District.
They were raised.
The men recruited into Freedom House were largely unemployed Black residents. Some were Vietnam veterans. Many had been labeled “untrainable.”
They became among the first paramedics in America.
Among the early paramedics were:
John Moon
Mitchell Brown
Timothy McCall
Wesley Lee
Walter Brown
Dennis Williams
And others whose names history is still restoring.
They mastered advanced cardiac life support, airway management, trauma stabilization, and mobile intensive care techniques. They responded to thousands of calls. Their survival rates were strong. Their professionalism undeniable.
They were not ambulance drivers.
They were architects of modern emergency medicine.
In 1975, the City of Pittsburgh dissolved Freedom House and created a new municipal EMS system.
The training model remained.
The protocols remained.
The infrastructure remained.
The leadership did not.
The new city EMS became predominantly white.
The Black paramedics who had proven the model were no longer centered in the system they built.
Their experiment became policy.
Their innovation became ordinance.
Their presence became history.
Public memory credited institutions.
The Hill District remembered who carried the stretchers.
Several Freedom House members continued careers in emergency medicine and public service. Others carried the quiet distinction of having transformed pre-hospital care long before the country was ready to credit them.
Modern EMS systems and structured 911 response protocols carry their fingerprints.
They were not a pilot program.
They were a foundation.
“The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” — Psalm 118:22
BREADCRUMB
Sometimes the rejected become the infrastructure.
We see you, Freedom House:
John Moon.
Mitchell Brown.
Timothy McCall.
Wesley Lee.
Walter Brown.
Dennis Williams.
And the others whose names deserve light.
You brought intensive care into neglected streets. You professionalized emergency response in America.
You turned crisis into curriculum.
Bread Crumbs — for those coming after us.
Victorious without reward.
Still here.
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