Rep. Summer Lee Lee’s Bill Seeks to Award the Now Defunct Freedom House a Congressional Gold Medal
Black Americans helped build and professionalize what the nation now recognizes as emergency medical services. Long before EMT became a household acronym, a group of Black men in Pittsburgh’s Hill District were pioneering modern pre hospital care through the groundbreaking Freedom House Ambulance Service.
Now, U.S. Rep. Summer Lee is working to ensure their contributions receive national recognition.
Rep. Summer Lee Introduces Bill to Honor Freedom House
Lee has introduced legislation that would award the defunct Freedom House Ambulance Service a Congressional Gold Medal. The medal would be displayed at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
“Black communities were not being served when there was an emergency…there was no one to take care of them, to get them to the hospital. There was no pre hospital care. People were dying,” Lee said of Pittsburgh in the 1960s.
Her bill aims to bring broader awareness to what historians recognize as America’s first EMT service and to the Black leaders who reshaped emergency response nationwide.
How Freedom House Revolutionized Emergency Care
Founded in 1965, Freedom House Ambulance Service became the first emergency medical service in the United States staffed by paramedics trained beyond basic first aid, according to the bill’s text.
The program originated as Freedom House Enterprises, an initiative designed to stimulate economic opportunity in Pittsburgh’s predominantly Black Hill District, where many residents lived below the poverty line. The mission was twofold: provide employment and job training for residents, including individuals deemed “unemployable” by city welfare offices, and improve emergency medical access.
Philip Hallen, then president of the Maurice Falk Medical Fund and a former ambulance driver, envisioned a new model for emergency medical care that fused social justice with clinical innovation. Working with medical professionals, Hallen helped train community members who would become highly skilled paramedics.
“These were not doctors. They were not medical professionals. These are people, particularly men, who were underemployed who were in this job corps kind of program to get them employed,” Lee said. “They became experts through this training, and then they were able to train other people, and it was able to multiply from there.”
She added, “It was the investment in the people first that really was the foundation of the EMS service.”
Despite its success, Freedom House was defunded in 1975 amid political opposition and racial tension.
“They would be disbanded because of how well they ran. The white communities felt like they were now missing out on something and they took the program,” Lee said.
Although dismantled, the program’s influence endured. Freedom House’s clinical data, training model and innovations directly shaped standards later adopted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and contributed to the nationwide implementation of advanced life support ambulance systems.
A Call to Preserve Black Medical History
Lee said the erasure of Freedom House mirrors modern political fights over Black history and diversity initiatives.
“All that is a reason why this should come back to the forefront,” she said, noting Pittsburgh’s legacy of medical innovation. “That there is a rich history here at Pittsburgh. That innovation came from here. So many firsts came from here. And that is something that Black Pittsburgh and all of Pittsburgh should be just immensely proud of.”
Addressing broader concerns about the rollback of progress for Black Americans, Lee added, “We have to push back at every single level, and it cannot just be marginalized people who are pushing back with us.”
“If Trump can get away with doing this to our community and everyone else turns a blind eye, that’s the beginning, that’s authoritarianism grows. So we need more people to push back at every single level of this,” she said. “If you care anything about the country, you have to recognize that that is an attack on you too.”
