"We are NOT a Civil Rights organization"

As late as 1954 Dr. [Hector] García claimed, “We are not and have never been a civil rights organization. Personally I hate the word.”... 

Dr. García, did not wish to alienate whites in Texas–or anywhere else–by appearing to join the struggle of black people for civil rights... 

By the early 1950s the American GI Forum, while still denying that it was a civil rights organization, sought to end discrimination in Texas schools, in employment, and in the use of public spaces. The core strategy depended on educating Anglos that “Americans of Spanish-speaking descent” or Latin Americans were Caucasians and that to identify them as anything but white, whether on birth certificates or traffic citations, was illegal. Making any distinction between Latin Americans and whites, he wrote, was a “slur,” an insult to all Latin Americans.

Neil Foley, "Partly Colored or Other White: Mexican Americans and Their Problem with the Color Line," in Beyond Black and White: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the U.S. South and Southwest

On the White Side of the Fence

[American G.I] Forum leader Manuel Avila feared that any mention of sympathy toward blacks might hurt the Mexican American cause.

"Sooner of later we're going to have to say which side of the fence we're on. Are we white or not [and] if we are white why do we ally with the Negro?"

Avila wrote. "Let's face it, first we have to establish we are white then be on the white side and then we'll become Americans - otherwise never."

Avila had rather simple logic; as whites, Anglos were Mexicans' natural ally, not blacks. He also contended that Mexican Americans in California and Arizona had progressed because they "will never make an issue of defending the Negro."

"To go to bat for the Negro as a Mexican-American," Avila emphasized, "is suicide".

Fighting Their Own Battles: Mexican Americans, African Americans, and the Struggle For Civil Rights in TexasBrian Behnken - University Of North Carolina Press - 2011