Book review: American Sirens : The Incredible Story Of The Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics

Thank you to Robert Koehler for submitting this book review. 

American Sirens : The Incredible Story Of The Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics  by Kevin Hazzard

Before the early 1970s, there were few ambulance companies in this country, and almost none that featured trained personnel.  If someone had an emergency, most often the call was answered by the police, who had no medical training.  They would simply put the individual, unsupervised, into an unequipped ambulance and race off to the nearest hospital.  One well known physician, a Pittsburgh anesthesiologist renowned for developing CPR, decided that what this country needed were trained paramedics who could deliver care immediately when summoned to a medical emergency.

This physician, Peter Safar, had one problem, though; no one in Pittsburgh’s government was interested in his proposal, preferring the cheaper status quo.  Undeterred, in 1967 he approached Freedom House, an organization set up to help meet the medical needs of the city’s Black community, and convinced them to help him recruit Black men whom he could educate to become the country’s first paramedics.  Once fully trained, these sixty-some individuals became members of Freedom House Ambulance Service, working in Pittsburgh’s predominately Black Hill area.

In Kevin Hazzard’s engaging page turner, American Sirens, he profiles a number of the individuals who received their training under Safar, and the continued racism they faced while providing services in the years before Freedom House Ambulance Service was finally disbanded and blended into a city-wide service employing the blueprint perfected by these trained paramedics.  Also featured is Nancy Caroline, the young physician who became the Medical Director of Freedom House’s program.  She would later write a textbook, Emergency Care In The Streets, that became the go-to reference used in developing EMS programs across the country.  American Sirens is a captivating read about how these pioneers transformed health care in the United States.