The Napkin In Between
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The Napkin In Between
Pioneers of Change: The Legacy of The Freedom House Ambulance Service
Join me in today's episode as we journey back to the 1960s to honor the unsung heroes of the Freedom House Ambulance Service in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania . These pioneers, despite facing systemic racism, revolutionized emergency medical care for Black communities and laid the groundwork for modern paramedics. With the visionary leadership of Phil Hallen and groundbreaking medical contributions from Dr. Peter Safar and Dr. Nancy Caroline, these 25 Black men proved that resilience and innovation could overcome adversity. We reflect on their enduring legacy and the need to recognize their pivotal role in shaping emergency services as we know them today.
Is this thing on? Hello, hello, uh-oh, another yapper with a mic. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Napkin Inbetween podcast. I'm your host, Daijné Jones.
Daijné:Girl Beyonce won an album of the year. Finally, they stopped playing with my good sis. Oh my god. I cannot tell you how happy I was. This is the peak of my week. Mind you, I we're getting straight into it.
Daijné:Y'all know we had to talk about this. I cannot tell you how happy I was that she finally won album of the year. Mind you, this should be like her fourth or so album of the year. Lemonade should have won album of the year. Self-titled should have won album of the year. Renaissance should have won album of the year.
Daijné:But they were playing in my girl's face with this album. She made it so that they physically could. There was no other answer. They had to give her album of the year. If they didn't, it would have proved everything that we have been saying, that they have been snubbing her, that they have been actively campaigning against her and undermining her work and they like there, it was just no fucking question. It was no fucking question and I'm so proud of her and just proud that she finally did it like oh, I love her, I really do. And I just I just knew, like as soon as they announced that she had won album of the year, I knew that they were gonna come out they meaning people on the internet were gonna come out and have excuses for why she won. Oh, Jay-Z bought it. It was rigged like all the shit, like I knew it. Mind you, if we really want to talk about Jay-Z buying anything in terms of the Grammys, if Jay-Z was going to buy anything, he bought Lemonade being snubbed Like let's be fucking for real. But I knew going to bed Sunday night that I was going to wake up Monday morning and people were going to be crashing out and all their conspiracy theories, all their weird why she won, other than the fact that the album was just fucking it. And I knew that there was going to be a little racism sprinkled on for a little razzle dazzle.
Daijné:So I went to bed sunday night ready for war the next day, because y'all know me, I love to argue, I love to call people out. It is literally my favorite extracurricular activity, apart from snatching JLO's wig every chance that I get. And when I went to bed Sunday night I just knew I was going to wake up and it was going to be the Swifties. I knew that they were going to be the ones who were being racist, who were making up these weird, stupid conspiracy theories. Imagine my surprise when I woke up and it was Billie fans. What I literally that was the plot twist that I did not have on my bingo card. I was shook. We snatched their wigs, no less.
Daijné:But like I was prepared to go to war with Swifties, I, I, I was so ready and the Swifties this time they've been quiet or they've been going at Billie fans in support of Beyonce, like whoa quite the change of events. I mean, it makes sense. Obviously, it is just the bare minimum, so I'm not going to do too much and be like, oh my god, thank you, Swifties like bare fucking minimum. But it was just like I was not expecting it to be the Billie Eilish fans. That's crazy. That was just so crazy to me. I'm not going to gonna lie. I was shocked. I don't. I maybe I shouldn't have been, because all it takes is a little bit of white people to get upset and then they immediately resort to racism. But I was shocked. I'm not gonna hold you. I was shocked. I was not expecting that.
Daijné:And it's just like all of their critiques or all of their support of why Billie Eilish's album should have won. They're like, oh, this song, wildflower, l'amor de ma vie, the greatest. Like, how could she not win with these songs? And it's like, okay, so this is album of the year, not song. Right? So in terms of album of the year, the award is based on an entire body of work. Right like you can't just pick and choose different songs. To be like this is why she should have won. Tell me, in reference to the entire album, why she should have won.
Daijné:Because I like yes, I was ready to argue, but I was also ready to hear people out. Because it's it's not wrong to be upset that your fav didn't win. You can be upset, that's, that's completely fine. But it's like have an actual argument to back up why you're upset. And also, you don't have to be racist. Right, like you can be upset without being racist. I wonder if white people know that you don't have to immediately resort to racism when you're upset. There are other ways that we can express our upsetness. You know what I mean.
Daijné:But the two main arguments that I saw was number one oh, this song, that song, blah, blah, blah, which again it's album of the year, so we're talking about the entire body of work, not just songs. But the other argument was oh, this many streams, that many streams. I'm gonna stop you right there, because the Grammy's aren't about streams, bookie butt. The Grammy for Album of the Year is about how your entire album, the entire body of work, can affect the music industry culture, like historical significance. That's what the award is about. And every single time that I've seen a Billie Eilish fan talk about why Billie Eilish should have won album of the year, they're not giving valid arguments to sustain that in regards to what album of the year and how that award is picked. And don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Billie Eilish fan. I love Billie Eilish. I loved hit me hard and soft album went triple fucking platinum in my home.
Daijné:But just because I like something, I can't turn off my logical brain and just root for that thing and this is why I feel like I can never say that I am a stan of any one person. I would never say that I'm in the Beyhive. I don't know what Billie Eilish's fans call themselves, but I would never say that I'm in their like stan. Because when you see yourself as a stan, the parasocial line that you have with the artist it's not even that, it's blurry, it is non-existent. Like you're going this hard, you're being racist, you're spouting these crazy conspiracy theories for a stranger, for someone who does not know you, for someone who does not know that you exist. And it's like, where's the decorum, where's the shame? Like, what? Like I just could never be that person who disregards all logic and stands for something, no matter what. Like that's weird. That's weird.
Daijné:I think your brain is rotted a little bit and you can feel an emotional connection to someone's music and someone's art, but, like, don't let your emotional connection override your logic. There has to still be logic and, in my opinion, I have not seen one logical argument as to why Billie Eilish should have won album of the year over Beyonce, when we look at what the criteria for album of the year are, it's not about streams, it's not about popularity, it's not about this song, that song. It is about the body of work and Cowboy Carter was such an amazing body of work. It told a historical story of how country music has been whitewashed and stolen and appropriated from black people. It brought light to so many different country artists, black country artists, and it changed the thought process that as an artist, you have to stay in this one specific box. There's five plus different genres on the Cowboy Carter album because genres are a funny little concept and they're there to keep people in a specific box, to kind of keep them in line within the industry. And Beyonce is like you're not going to do that to me and nor do we have to do that as artists, like we can branch out, we can do different things, we can change the game, and that's what Album of the Year is about and that's why she won. Period.
Daijné:I'm sure that people will continue to be upset about it. It doesn't change the fact that the 13,000 voting members listened to all of the albums, because that's another critique I saw. People are like it shouldn't have won because I didn't hear it. Who are you? Who are you, mind you? It's always these fucking people with no profile picture. You struggle with even putting yourself out there. You're going to try to critique someone else who is actively putting themselves out there and trying to change the game. Please be so fucking for real. Them recording academy members do not give one fuck, two fuck, red fuck, blue fuck. If a random fuck on tiktok has not heard the Cowboy Carter album, they listen to it. They listen to all the albums, which is why they can accurately critique all of the albums like please, please, be so for real.
Daijné:I could go on and on about this forever, but I just like, I'm just so proud of her and I love that she took the time to tell an unknown story and bring light to the actual roots of country music and reclaimed it, regardless of people saying that she's not country enough or trying to overlook her because she's not a country artist. Like I'm just so proud of everything that the album represents and and the story that it tells. So, anyways, congratulations to Beyonce. My girl did that and I'm so, so proud of her.
Daijné:Segueing into an untold story and what we're gonna talk about today, I want to shed light on more people in black history who have paved the way for the life and the things that we know of today. So today we're going to focus on the medical field and specifically ambulance and EMT services. So let's go back in time to the 1960s and specifically in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Prior to the mid-1960s, if you were experiencing an emergency, who you would call would either be the police or a local funeral home. Once you called, they would show up with a paddy wagon. They would put you in the back of the paddy wagon and then they would transport you to the hospital. At most, the services that would be provided in these paddy wagons was basic first aid. So the basic first aid would be like CPR, treating minor cuts and bruises, treating minor burns, applying bandages and dresses like, draining blisters, like really, really basic stuff. So if you were experiencing like a real emergency, like a heart attack or anything like that, you would have to wait for the things that could actually actively help those things until you got to the hospital.
Daijné:So because of how basic the first aid was, there was a high rate of mortality because people were not getting the treatment that they needed in an appropriate amount of time, and in cities like Pittsburgh it was racially segregated. So it was not only that, it was taking forever for you know, the police to arrive and it would take them a while to get to the hospital so that you can get actual treatment In the black communities. It would take even longer because they were further away from the hospitals or there was a lot of tension between black people and the police, and so the black people could call the police and they could deem it as not an emergency so that they wouldn't come or they would just take forever, and by the time they got there the person had either succumbed to their injuries or succumbed to the injuries shortly after arriving to the hospital. Also, there were times where black people didn't even want to call the police because of racial tensions and how black people are treated by the police. So the ambulance service, which was named the Freedom House Ambulance Service, was initially started in predominantly black communities so that they could get the emergency care that they needed that was not being provided to them by the police. So there was a non-profit in Pittsburgh called the Freedom House Enterprises, and the goal of this non-profit was to provide job training and employment opportunities in Pittsburgh. The Freedom House Ambulance Service was born out of this non-profit, so Freedom House Enterprises received part of its funding from the Falk Fund, which was headed by Phil Hallan.
Daijné:Phil Hallan's main goal was to improve the responses to medical emergencies as well as create employment opportunities specifically for black communities in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and more specifically, the Hill District. So then word got to Peter Safar, who is known as the father of CPR, that Phil wanted to improve the ambulance service in Pittsburgh, and the improvement of the ambulance service was really important to Peter Safar because his daughter had died following an asthma attack in transport to the hospital. She had had this asthma attack and while she was being transported to the hospital they could only do so much in the ambulances that they had at the time and because it was just basic first aid. She unfortunately passed away. So Peter and Phil got together and they were both able to contribute to a better equipped ambulance service. Peter offered his ideas on how to better improve the ambulance service, namely with more intense paramedic training and a better model of, you know, the vehicle that people were being transferred in, and phil was able to offer actual people that could be trained and could run the ambulance service. So phil contacts freedom house enterprise and is able to recruit workers who they can train to be what we know as paramedics today.
Daijné:So the first people who were recruited for the Freedom House Ambulance Service were 25 black men, all from the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Now the interesting part about the men who were recruited these men were deemed unemployable. Either they hadn't graduated high school, they had criminal records, and so people just threw them away, didn't want to spend time trying to actively rebuild or help them to get jobs or an education or anything. So these 25 men are recruited. They go through training with Peter Safar. So the course with Dr. Safar was a 32-week 300-hour course which included anatomy, physiology, CPR, advanced first aid, nursing and defensive driving. And for the recruits who had not finished high school, they were helped with completing their GEDs.
Daijné:So in 1967, the Freedom House Ambulance Service was began and then in 1968 was when it became fully operational and they had two ambulances. So they're serving the black neighborhoods and it got to the point where they were responding even faster than the police and they could respond in less than 10 minutes to people who needed emergency services. And not only were they responding faster but because they were serving predominantly black communities, as black people, when they were responding they were much more gracious and much more understanding to the sicknesses and the needs that the black community had. I was watching an interview of one of the men who was a part of the Freedom House Ambulance Service because, mind you, some of them are still alive today and he said that when he would go into the homes it was like either people that he knew because they were all in community together or it was people that he was like. He realized and understood that he was a guest in the home and that he was there to help and all he wanted to do was help.
Daijné:And it got to the point where the people in other communities, specifically white people who are outside of the black community, wanted to call the ambulance service over the police, because the ambulance service was known to have a higher standard of care and they were responding much faster than the police. And even though they were medically trained and doing far better than the police, and even though they were medically trained and doing far better than the police, who did not have any medical training, they faced so much racism within the hospitals so they would transport patients to the hospital and they would be mistaken for lower hospital staff. You know they would be asked to go mop the floor or do whatever, and they're like oh, I'm here with the ambulance service, like that's, I don't work in that department, so they would be discriminated against in that way of being seen as, oh, like you must be the person who's here to mop the floor, or white people in the hospital. Sometimes they would refuse to allow the trained people to help them because they were black. Racism is the craziest fucking thing in the world to me. You are in the hospital dealing with an injury, a possible life affecting injury that could kill you, and you don't want help from this person because they are black. You would rather die. You would rather die in some cases, than allow a black person to touch you or to help you. Like what the actual fuck? And it's crazy because we are here several years later and people would still rather be hurt by a white man than saved by a black woman. Ie why we have trump in office now. Craziest thing in the fucking world. So the people in these white communities they wanted the ambulance service, but they didn't want the black people to be the ones offering the ambulance service.
Daijné:So then in 1970, Peter Flaherty becomes mayor of the city, and Peter Flaherty had had a long-standing opposition to the Freedom House Ambulance Service. He said that because the ambulance service was in part funded by the city, that the city should be the one overseeing the service, and because the city wasn't overseeing it, he wanted to end the freedom house service. Phil Hallen and Peter Safar clocked his tea with this. They were like you don't actually give a fuck if it's overseen by the city. You don't like that it is operating by black people and you also don't like that the police union is not being utilized as much as the ambulance service. Because the police union were, in the mayor's ear, upset because people didn't want to call the police, they would rather call the ambulance service because, again, higher quality of care and better response time. And so the police were worried about losing their jobs and so they're angry with the mayor because they voted him in. And now they're like I'm about to lose my job. Like they were upset that people didn't want to utilize them as much and so, in order to keep the police union happy and to keep himself getting votes and in office, the mayor wanted to end the freedom house ambulance service.
Daijné:So this is where they start to try to take the idea of this ambulance service and overpower it with white people and push all of the black people who are operating the service out of it. The first thing that happens is the Freedom Ambulance Service requests with the Mayor to expand their contract so that they can provide service to different parts of the city, because part of the issue was people would want to call the ambulance service but the ambulance service wasn't able to service them because they weren't licensed to go into that part of the city. They weren't able to service that district Mayor shuts this down. He doesn't like that idea because, again, he wants to push the black people out and appeal to the police. So if he were to expand it and allow the black people to service more of the community, that would further aid in the police officers losing their job. This was something that the Freedom Ambulance Service wanted to do because, number one, they wanted to help more of the city and then also, if they were able to service more affluent parts of the city, they could collect more of the fee that they also, if they were able to service more affluent parts of the city, they could collect more of the fee that they charged in order to run their ambulance service and get more money and be able to expand it even more. The Mayor knew all of this, which is why he also said we're not expanding your contract. In addition to refusing to expand the contract the contract that they already had previously in place they were stalling the money that the city was supposed to give the ambulance service in order to operate, and they also decided to cut the funding to the ambulance service by 50%.
Daijné:The Mayor also signed an ordinance so that the ambulance service couldn't use their sirens in the downtown area. The reason he gave that they weren't allowed to use the sirens was noise complaints. So because they weren't allowed to use their sirens anymore, it slowed them down and they weren't able to transport their patients to the hospital as fast, and they weren't able to even get to the patients as fast. And so the police were able to get to the patients before them. And then, in 1974, the Mayor announced plans for a citywide ambulance service which would include police who were also trained as paramedics.
Daijné:Where did he get this idea from? So the mayor had called in one of the men who had worked for the freedom house ambulance service and this young man who worked for the ambulance service. He thought like, oh my gosh, I'm getting called in by the Mayor, I'm gonna be able to share my ideas with him. And so he took a proposal to his meeting with the Mayor to talk about you know how they could expand the ambulance service to more parts of the city of Pittsburgh. And so he goes into this meeting with the Mayor and he has his proposal, he presents it to the mayor and the mayor, instead of talking about the proposal with him, talks about how they can help with the noise that the ambulances are making. So he says you know, instead of using your siren, can you use like a bell? Just like stupid talk. That didn't really matter. But he he takes the proposal from this young man and he's like I'm going to talk about this with other people and we'll get back to you about you know how we can expand this service. Young man never hears back from the Mayor to help with the expansion. But the Mayor takes this proposal and uses it as a way to expand the ambulance service within the city, steals his plan Like we're not going to sugarcoat it. That's exactly what the fuck the mayor did. So on October 15th 1975, the Freedom House Ambulance Service closes and they start this expanded ambulance service in the city.
Daijné:Those who were hired for this new ambulance service were all white. There were some people from the ambulance service who were hired to help with this new expanded city ambulance service. However, the goal was to push all of them out. And so the different ways that those who had initially operated the ambulance service, the black men who were pushed out, those who had a criminal record, were not rehired into this new city's ambulance service. They were given pass/ fail exams on things that they were not educated on, but the white paramedics were educated on. And so they were all given the same test, but with different amounts of knowledge, and if they failed the exam they were pushed out. And then, for those who didn't have criminal records and were able to pass these pass/ fail exams that they were not taught on, they were assigned to non-essential or non-medical parts of this new city ambulance. And a year later, of the 26 Freedom House Ambulance members who had joined this new city ordinance, only half of them were still there.
Daijné:And, mind you, of the people who were there, like I said, they were given non-essential or non-medical positions within the service, or they were being overseen by white people who were not as experienced as them, which is just the never-ending cycle of what it is like to be a black person in america. You're undermined, you prove that you are in fact, not unemployable and you have skills and you can use these skills to better help your community. They see that and they're like I'm going to take this thing, I'm going to push you out and I'm going to steal it from you, white people, I want to pull my fucking hair out. I want to pull my hair out. This is what shaped the ambulance service that we know, not only in this country but in the world, this ambulance service that was created by Dr. Peter Safar and then expanded upon. I don't know if I mentioned this earlier.
Daijné:In 1974, Dr. Nancy Caroline joined the Freedom House Ambulance Service and she expanded on the paramedic training that these black men had. So she taught them about IV drug administration, intubation, cardiac care. She helped them expand, you know, the knowledge that they already had, and this is what we see today in our ambulance service. It is rooted in Dr Phil Safer, Dr. Caroline and these 25 black men who became the first recruitment of paramedics for the freedom house ambulance service. Without these men, we would not have the ambulance service that we know of today, and I think it's so important to give them their flowers and to recognize them, because this might not be something that a lot of people know, but it is just a testament to the continued whitewashing and appropriation of black people and our contributions to society. There was no ambulance service like this anywhere before these 25 black men who operated the Freedom House Ambulance Service. To all of them, I just want to say thank you for your service and for your contribution to not only black history, but just history in general. This is something that was literally not a thing before. They were recruited and trained and operated the Freedom House Ambulance Service, and they should be recognized for that. We really are it like black people are just it, and it's just so overlooked, as it has always been, and so I just wanted to bring more attention to these 25 men who started the ambulance service that we know of today and that helps so many people.
Daijné:Okay, I'm done talking, um. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode. I hope that it was educational. Again, if there is a recommendation for someone that we should talk about, DM me, email me, leave it in the comments. Um, I just want to shed more light on these untold stories. Thank you for for tuning in today. I hope everyone is having a good day, except for that orange drink lady, and I will see you all in the next episode. Peace and love. Talk to you later. The Napkin in Between, by Daijné Jones, produced by Daijné Jones, post-production by Daijné Jones, music by Sam Champagne and graphics by Isma Vidal. Don't forget to like and subscribe. See you next.