From Good Samaritans to First Responders
- Coach Ki
- Feb 9
- 4 min read
American Sirens | The untold story of America's first Black paramedics that revolutionized emergency medicine
Have you ever heard of the Good Samaritan Law? It was created to protect non-medical bystanders who, in good faith, stop to render aid to someone in need. It shields them from any legal fallout after the fact while encouraging the moral duty we all share to help one another. It also protects the injured party, ensuring they are being cared for with good intentions (3). What I find really interesting is that this law gets its name from the Parable of the Good Samaritan, where, through the actions of a stranger, we are taught that neighborly love, sacrifice, and social responsibility extend beyond social, racial, and religious lines (Luke 10:25-37). It wasn’t until I was a freshman enrolled in an athletic injury care class that I first made the connection between this parable and the law.
This brief interaction in the early 1st century is often cited as one of the earliest recorded instance of a non-medical person providing aid outside a hospital or institutional setting. For thousands of years, the common practice was to walk around or step over someone in need. If you were unable to make it to a physician or healer, your odds of survival were low.
How Crisis Shaped Care
If that was our norm for so long, then how did we arrive at our current state? The ugly truth is that most of our advancements in medicine are war-driven. In the United States, the Civil War was a major turning point for EMS, as doctors and nurses on the front lines returned home with vital knowledge and lived experiences that they integrated into civilian services. Funeral home hearses and the back of police vehicles were slowly replaced by fully loaded hospital-on-wheels (1). But these advancements didn’t come overnight, and they didn’t come easy. It would take several decades of persistence and grit to overcome a prejudiced system to arrive at the reality that we now take for granted; help that's three digits away.
In the book American Sirens, journalist and former paramedic Kevin Hazzard details how twenty-four black men, under the guidance of Peter Safar, physician and father of CPR, broke barriers, pushed limits, and brought life-saving medicine to the streets. Over the course of three years of research and interviews with John Moon, a Freedom House paramedic pioneer, we are painted a vibrant picture of The Hill District, aka The Harlem of Pittsburgh.
Between the 1930s and 1960s, The Hill was the epicenter of the black renaissance: arts, music, businesses, and civil rights efforts thrived here. By the early 1960s, urban renewal came to shake things up. What was posited as a way to revitalize the neighborhood was really a cover for redlining and gentrifying communities of color (2). The Hill began to experience economic decline, most notably during the construction of the civic center from 1956 to early 1960, which destroyed much of the lower district.
Resilience That Changed Medicine
Persevering through interference from neighboring communities and from local, state, and federal governments, in 1969, Freedom House prevailed and created what we now know as the gold standard for emergency medicine services. While attempts have been made to erase their contributions to society, their resilience, tenacity, and unshakeable belief that everyone has the right to live led to one of the 20th century's biggest medical advancements (2). American Sirens was written to restore Freedom House to its proper place. To recognize and thank the men who were the first to respond with care. For a closer look at their story, watch their documentary, The First Responders, which delves deeper into their groundbreaking history.
American Sirens is easily one of my favorite pieces of Black American history I recently discovered. In all honesty, I cried when I finished reading, which is typical of me with most book endings. This time, the words of James Baldwin echoed in my mind: “To be a negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost all of the time”. And while I do remind myself to keep my heart light, I couldn’t help but feel the waves of anger, sadness, joy, inspiration, and pride. Anger for the dismissal and attempted erasure of our history, sadness that racial bias continues to be a determining factor in who lives and who dies, inspiration because without Freedom House the work I do would look very different, and pride in the courage and brilliance of people that refuse to be forgotten.
Thank you, Freedom House, and Happy Black History Month!
With Love & Gratitude,
Coach Ki
Resources and Further Reading
Bass, R. R. (2015). History of EMS. Emergency Medical Oversight: Clinical Practice and Systems Oversight, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118990810.ch82
Hazzard, K. (2024). American Sirens: The incredible story of the black men who became America’s first paramedics. Grand Central.
West, B. (2022, September 12). Good samaritan laws. StatPearls [Internet]. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK542176/
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