Regarding Joseph Smith being more liberal, I can agree with that. The Smith family were involved in anti-slavery movements when they lived in Boston (prior to ~1810 - JS Sr was a 5th generation Bostonian). Also Lucy Mack Smith's father was a Unitarian preacher, and Unitarians were at the forefront of the anti-slavery struggles and several Unitarian preachers were murdered for it.

Apparently a member of the branch presidency of the first branch of the church in Boston was black, and endorsed (directly or indirectly) by Joseph Smith. Elijah Able was at least half black and he not only held the priesthood (and was ordained by Joseph Smith himself) but he was a member of the Third Quorum of Seventy at the time of his death in the early 1910s. Joseph Smith even unofficially adopted a black teenaged girl and wanted to have her sealed to himself and Emma as a daughter (Jane Manning).

According to the recent church essay on race issues in the church, the racial issues with the Priesthood began with Brigham Young, who even owned slaves and made Utah a slave territory (as a political power play). Had JS lived another few decades perhaps the church history would have taken a more egalitarian angle with respect to race.