On January 15, 1999, David Howard, a white aide to Anthony A. Williams, the black mayor of Washington, D.C., used "niggardly" in reference to a budget. This apparently upset one of his black colleagues (identified by Howard as Marshall Brown), who interpreted it as a racial slur and lodged a complaint.
Shortly after the Washington incident, another controversy erupted over the use of the word at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. At a February 1999 meeting of the Faculty Senate, a junior English major and vice chairwoman of the Black Student Union told the group how a professor teaching Chaucer had used the word niggardly. She later said she was unaware of the related Washington, D.C. controversy that came to light just the week before. She said the professor continued to use the word even after she told him that she was offended. "I was in tears, shaking," she told the faculty. "It's not up to the rest of the class to decide whether my feelings are valid."[6]
In late January or early February 2002, a white fourth-grade teacher in Wilmington, North Carolina was formally reprimanded for teaching the word and told to attend sensitivity training.[7] The teacher, Stephanie Bell, said she used "niggardly" during a discussion about literary characters. Parent Akwana Walker, who is black, protested the use of the word, saying it offended her because it sounds similar to a racial slur.[7]
Bell's union, the North Carolina Association of Educators, told her not to speak about the situation, so her son, Tarl Bell, spoke to the newspaper. Tarl Bell said his mother received a letter from the school principal stating that the teacher used poor judgment and instructing her to send an apology to the parents of her students, which was done. The principal's letter also criticized the teacher for lacking sensitivity.[7] The daughter of the complaining parent was moved to another classroom.
Dennis Boaz, a history teacher, sued the administrators of the Mendocino County Office of Education for defamation.[8] Mr. Boaz, who was bargaining for Ukiah schoolteachers, wrote a letter saying that the "tenor of the negotiation tactics of the district office has become increasingly negative and niggardly." The response was a memo from one defendant of the lawsuit that implied that Boaz was racist, and a letter cosigned by the other defendant and nine other individuals in the Mendocino County school system stating that Boaz's comments were "racially charged and show a complete lack of respect and integrity toward Dr. Nash, Ukiah Unified District Superintendent," who is black.
