How a team of Black paramedics set the gold standard for emergency medical response

It is difficult to imagine society without the assurance that skilled, professional paramedics will respond to a medical emergency. But before the 1970s, clumsy, haphazard care, often at the hands of police officers, was the norm for emergencies. So much so that negligent ambulance care was responsible for an estimated 1,200 to 2,000 preventable deaths per year in the United States, according to journalist and former paramedic Kevin Hazzard.

In his new book American Sirens, Hazzard narrates the eight-year saga of the Freedom House Ambulance Service, the all-Black team of paramedics who pioneered the profession from 1968-1975 in Pittsburgh.

The book documents an untold piece of American history, recording how Freedom House saved thousands of lives and influenced the emergence of professional paramedic services in cities across the U.S., eventually setting the gold standard of emergency medical care.

Hazzard begins, the Austrian-born physician who co-founded Freedom House Ambulance Service shortly after he invented mouth-to-mouth resuscitation; and , the first medical director of Freedom House who authored the seminal emergency medical services text