The Importance of Being Like Them

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John says that sometimes people who lived in the Hill District were called unemployables. John found a job working at a hospital and saw something he hadn't seen before. Almost all of the orderlies in the hospital were black and almost all of the nurses and doctors were white. "It was something that really caught me by surprise"

As recently as 1965, if you had a medical emergency, the people who showed up at your door would be volunteer firefighters, police officers, or undertakers with a hearse. Today, the story of how a group of Black men from Pittsburgh changed that.

Kevin Hazzard’s book is American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America's First Paramedics.

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