It seemed like a good idea to bring a couple of grandchildren over to my house to see the movie "Hairspray." Its 1962 setting transported me back in time to that year when two major prejudices were big --- the attitudes some whites projected toward blacks, referred to then as "Negroes," and the disrespect openly shown overweight people, particularly young people.

In 1962 I was already a writer, raising my young children on Long Island in New York. Catholics here a few years earlier were split off from the Diocese of Brooklyn. We became the Diocese of Rockville Centre. An incredible priest, the late Msgr. Richard Hanley, received permission to start our own diocesan paper, which he named The Long Island Catholic. I was one of its first reporters.

From the beginning Msgr. Hanley made it clear we would cover hard issues such as race, poverty, the Second Vatican Council and parish life, showing these were the crucial concerns of Catholics in the pews.

Our newly formed diocese had also just founded a Catholic interracial council to promote Catholic involvement in integration efforts. My co-worker, the late Bill Goddard, went to Selma, Ala., to participate in the publicized march for interracial justice. I formed "Interfaith, Interracial Home Visit Days," a project which involved inviting blacks to the homes of those who favored integration.

In 1960-61, I began working with the one black teacher in our school system in Smithtown, Long Island, encouraging school administrators to hire at least one black teacher for each school. One junior high school principal, a Catholic no less, called me in for a meeting to blast me as a mother who should be home disciplining her children --- he didn't approve of the sideburns one of my sons wore then --- and not running around trying to tell schools what to do.

I also invited a Nigerian to spend the Christmas holidays with my family back then. He was a Catholic, and he went with me to Mass. You would not believe the stories that circulated about me after that, none nice. Decades later, my children still remember the unwarranted criticism but always say how happy they were that we had that fine young man as a guest.

Another co-worker, the late Richard Mauter, and I did a series of stories on the black migrant workers who came to Long Island every year to work on the many farms. Later we also wrote a series on the town of Wyandanch on Long Island, purposely established many years ago as a "Negro" town. Those of us identified with interracial work were often harassed and publicly humiliated.

During a Sunday vigil at a firehouse that blackballed "Negro" applicants, we marched, many of us with young children. Then carloads of men pulled up and parked. The men took their hoses out, laughing as they shouted they were going to wash their trucks. But they began to hose us down. We ran away fast before the force of the water could injure our children.

Integration had a long way to go.

I was overjoyed that my young grandchildren, who learn and play with friends of all races without prejudice today, could not relate to the treatment of our black neighbors documented in the movie "Hairspray." They did, thank God, recognize how bad it must have been.

As for the other prejudice against "fat" people, I think that one has yet to end!

Antoinette Bosco is an author and columnist with Catholic News Service.