Topics

The boy in the black leotard was throwing yet another temper tantrum. Seventeen-year-old Bilal Smith had his back to his dance instructor at the Baltimore School for the Arts. As she demonstrated a movement sequence to the class, Bilal bent from the waist, ran his hands up and down his legs and began to rhythmically twitch his buttocks: Left. Right. Left, right, left. The room became silent. "I was just stretching," Bilal said. "You can just leave," the teacher replied. The door clicked shut behind the teen's retreating back — and the sound registered on Leslie Shepard, the school's director, with the sharp precision of a slap. In the 32 years that...