Those with just a tiny amount of education (maybe as little as reading or writing at a 2nd grade level) would open up schools which would be quickly filled by the inflow of people so anxious to learn. Young Booker was one of those people and, once he progressed beyond the level of the teacher, he set out to look elsewhere for anyone willing to teach him without regard to their color.
Accordingly, a large percentage of his later and most influential teachers were white. Probably another reason a lot of modern self-appointed black leaders despise Booker T. Washington.
He regularly disparaged teachers and pastors who were incompetent. He hated people who were just looking to avoid manual labor or take advantage of his people. His refusal to allow any of his students to avoid working was a testimony to this resolve. Many contemporaries hated him for this stand. He also trashed the entitlement mentality as equivalent to slavery.
His optimism in building an equal society based on merit was contagious, but Johnson’s Great Society proved to be the perfect vaccine.