NEW YORK - The first American Kurdish museum was started in 1988 by a woman who did not even know about the Kurds until well into her 40s.
That woman, Vera Beaudin Saeedpour, became a beloved figure of Kurdish studies in America. In the late 1980s, she started the “Kurdish Heritage Foundation of America,” which ran a 2,000-volume library, together with a museum housing a plethora of traditional Kurdish clothing and artifacts.
Saeedpour quite literally lived and breathed Kurdish culture: The top floor of her brownstone Brooklyn townhouse housed the museum, the basement was the library, and the ground floor was where she lived.
“I’m dealing with the whole world from this brownstone,” Saeedpour would say about her late-in-life calling.
Saeedpour dedicated her life to Kurdish studies largely because of her husband, Humayoun Saeedpour, an Iranian Kurd who she fell in love with while studying for her PhD at New York’s Columbia University. It was through Homayoun that she gained a small taste of the problems facing Kurds around the world.
He showed her a copy of the Oxford Concise Dictionary, which defined the term “Kurd” as “tall, predatory, and pastoral.”
“Killing Them Softly,” a paper she wrote in response to this blatant mischaracterization, led to the dictionary changing its definition of Kurd to: “A member of a mainly pastoral Islamic people living in Kurdistan.”
Five years later, Saeedpour witnessed an injustice to the Kurds close to home, after Humayoun was diagnosed with leukemia. His doctor, who had a friend being held hostage at the US embassy in Tehran, refused to give Humayoun a bone marrow transplant after learning of his Iranian origins. He died within the year.
After Saeedpour’s death in 2010, the collection was donated to Binghampton University, where it is curated by Turkish archaeologist and historian Aynur De Rouen. The set-up of the collection ensures that every aspect of Saeedpour’s own museum and library are in use. “From her museum artifacts and clothing, I created a permanent exhibit on Kurdish culture,” De Rouen says.
Meanwhile, all of the texts, including Saeedpour’s own extensive writings, are kept in the special collection section of the library, where researchers on Kurdish issues can have access. The curator is also quick to point out that the end goal is “digitizing everything,” so that researchers all over the world can access Saeedpour’s prodigious work.
However, the reason Saeedpour donated the collection to Binghampton University remains a mystery. According to De Rouen, Saeedpour’s papers show her writing for and about various universities, but never Binghampton. “Then, on her Deathbed,” De Rouen notes, “she told her children ‘Give it to Binghampton University.’” But, whatever the reason, De Rouen and Binghampton are very happy to have it.
And De Rouen does not plan to let Saeedpour’s work end. In addition to the main collection, she is hoping to expand the Kurdish studies area of the museum. Along with a Kurdish student, she has recently begun an oral history project among Kurds of the Binghampton area.
“There are 65 Kurdish families in the area,” she says. “The first Kurdish families came here in 1992 after the Gulf War.” The reason? The US government used Binghampton as a refugee area.
Speaking of her tough attitude toward research and advocacy, Saeedpour once said: “I tell people I’m a scholar, I never said I was a lady.” It was this tenacity for accuracy and good work that has led others to carry on her mission.
“I won’t take any money from any vested interest,” she once said. “I would rather starve. I do this because I care about the truth.”
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