I was reared in a racist home.

I was born in 1951, years before the Civil Rights movement, more than a decade before Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream of equality, 27 years before my religion extended the priesthood to all worthy male members.

They were different times, and growing up in an isolated town in southeastern Idaho didn't help. Those who lived there were almost all Mormon, and they were almost all white.

We saw black people on television or in the movies, in roles that usually reinforced common stereotypes. The first time I ever saw a black individual in person was when my family traveled to Sacramento by train to visit my mother's sister. I was 10, and all the porters on the train were black.

I was in my mid teens the first time I saw a black family walk into my father's grocery store. Since Montpelier lies on a common route to Yellowstone National Park, a lot of people passed through our town, and a lot of them stopped at the store. But almost none of them in the '50s and early '60s were black.

Which was just as well, because one of the popular items we sold was licorice penny candy in the shape of a baby with a name so offensive I can't write it in a family newspaper. Brazil nuts were identified by the same word. In those days, this was everyday language. It even was used in children's games.

My father was one of the most socially conscientious people in our community. He was a Democrat who served a term in the state Legislature and also served on the city council and the county commission.

He held John F. Kennedy in high esteem, was a champion of Lyndon Johnson and was a personal friend of Frank Church, Idaho's most visible Democratic senator, and Cecil Andrus, who was governor and later served as Jimmy Carter's Secretary of the Interior.

But he was also an amateur performer, and saw nothing amiss in painting his face black and lips white to appear in the then-popular minstrel shows, where white men would pretend to be black performers and spend an evening making fun of that race.

I was brought up to believe that this was very funny.

The first black person I got to know on a personal basis was a performer with the Young Ambassadors when I worked in public communications at BYU, about two years after the 1978 revelation giving the priesthood to all worthy male members. That was the same time I met real prejudice.

I was a tour guide for the performing group through the Southern states one summer, and the singers and dancers would stay in the homes of Church members where we performed to keep expenses down. But when the group performed in Hattiesburg, Miss., we were confronted by some of these members who were highly offended that a black was performing with the group. The black performer stayed with the bishop, because no one else would have him.

I revisited those events Saturday when I attended a screening of "Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons," made by Margaret Young and Darius Gray, at the LDS Film Festival at the SCERA theater.

It's a moving documentary that recounts the history of race relations through the eyes of American men and women who believed in the Church despite its long-standing policy which denied them the priesthood or access to the Church's temples, and who continue to be treated as different in their religion, even though those restrictions were dropped 30 years ago.

The film also served as a reflection of changing attitudes toward diversity in the country -- positive changes that help us to keep moving forward until the time comes when all of us learn to judge people "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

This is must-see viewing -- a documentary with a message that has the power to change attitudes, and, in the process, to change society. I think everyone should see it, when they get a chance. Broadcast dates for the film haven't been announced yet. The film's Web site is www.untoldstoryofblackmormons.com.