"What have the negroes done to help us?"

Business owners like Felix Tijerina resisted the sit-in movement and did not follow the mandates of the negotiated desegregation, which in most Texas cities remained entirely voluntary. Indeed, Tijerina did not desegregate his restaurants until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, although he did so willingly once the federal government banned segregation. 

Tijerina had ridiculed the sitins in 1960, and many other Mexican American leaders publicly opposed black protest activism. In July 1963, for instance, LULACers debated passing a resolution praising Martin Luther King Jr. The measure failed when one member wondered “what the negroes had done to help us?”

Behnken, Brian D. Fighting Their Own Battles Mexican Americans, African Americans, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Texas. The University of North Carolina Press, 2014.