A chapter in the upcoming book “W.D. Fard: The Man, Myth, and Mystery Behind the Nation of Islam” by Dr. John Andrew Morrow and Bilal Muhammad.
In 2025, Resume Byron shared the following photo on YouTube:
(Figure A-3.1. Wallace Ford High School Yearbook Photo from 1940)
He claimed to have received it from the Holzknecht family, namely, the relatives of Hazel Barton, the common-law partner of Wallie Dodd Ford. It was claimed that it was Wallace Ford’s graduation photo. I was asked what I thought. I responded that I could not confirm or deny that it was Wallace Dodd/Max Ford unless Resume Byron produced a source: a cover of the yearbook, its date, the high school it belonged to, the page on which the image is found. In other words, verify, verify, verify.
It is quite possible that many non-scholars do not understand the tiers of evidence and verification needed to corroborate the authenticity of sources for peer reviewed publication purposes. Any claim must be verifiable. Otherwise, it had no credence. It is a groundless claim. Since Resume Byron failed to provide the photo’s provenance, I did my own digging. I found it within a few minutes of searching through high school yearbooks on Ancestry.com.[1] And I found more:
(Figure A-3.2. U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-2016. Ancestry.com)
The person in the photograph is most certainly Wallace Max/Dodd Ford, the son of Hazel Barton. Even a cursory comparison of this photo with the one from the Coast Guard shows this to be true. What came as a shock was the description of the person in question:
Name: Wallace Ford
Estimated Age: 16
Birth Year: abt. 1924
Yearbook Date: 1940
School: Benjamin Franklin High School
School Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
(U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-2016. Ancestry.com)
Logic dictates that this information was provided by Ancestry.com. It is inconceivable that a yearbook would contain estimated ages and years of birth.
If Wallace Max Ford was born in 1920, as Hazel Barton claimed, he would have been twenty years old in this photograph. In contrast, the information provided estimates that he was born in 1924 and that he was sixteen years old.
The problem is patent: Wallie Dodd Ford married Carmen Treviño, a Mexican-born woman of Spanish ancestry, in Santa Ana, California, on June 5, 1924. This would suggest what Wallace Max/Dodd Ford was born after Wallie Dodd Ford and Hazel Barton broke up. According to some researchers, they hooked up around 1919 and broke up in October 1922. While that is speculative, it is a fact that she married Clarence Earl Osborn (1892-1926) on June 25, 1925, in Santa Ana, California. If these dates are accurate, that could pose questions about the parentage of Wallie Max/Dodd Ford. If Wallace Dodd Ford, junior was born in 1924, that was two years after Hazel Barton split up with Wallace Ford senior. After some searching, I found the following on the California Birth Index, 1905-1995:
Name Wallace M Ford
Birth Date 1 Sep 1920
Gender Male
Mother’s Maiden Name Barton
Birth County Los Angeles
(Ancestry.com)
Curiously, and unusually, the name of his father is not listed on the California birth index. Why? Because the boy was illegitimate? Because the father did not acknowledge paternity? Or because Hazel and/or Fard wanted to hide his identity? This could be the case if Fard was involved in crime or politics.
It is important to note that the California Birth Index does not include the original declaration of birth and the date it was submitted. It could have been submitted a few years after the boy was born. This was not entirely uncommon at the time, particularly when children were born at home with the help of a midwife.
Although Wallace Ford junior certainly resembles Wallace Ford senior, physiognomy or qiyafah, using physical traits to determine parentage, is a medieval pseudo-science. “Although some degree of facial resemblance is expected as a by-product of the heritability of phenotypic traits,” note scientists, “it does not guarantee that genetic paternity can accurately be detected as both facial phenotype and perceptual processes are shaped by the environment.”[2]
Despite the doubts that the yearbook dates could cause, not to mention the absence of a father on the California Birth Index, further research produced the original certificate of birth which indicates that Wallace Dodd Ford, born on September 1, 1920, was the son of Wallace Dodd Ford, who described himself as a 26 year old white man who was born in New Zealand and who ran a restaurant.
(Figure A-3.3 Birth Certificate of Wallace Dodd Ford. Public domain)
(Figure A-3.2. Wallace M. Ford US Coast Guard Photo. This is not Wallace Max Ford. This man was from Tennessee)
(Figure A-3.3. Photo of Wallace M. Ford, son of Hazel Barton, and Wallace Dodd Ford. The Highland Park News-Herald, Friday, August 14, 1942: 1. Source: Newspapers.com. Fair use)
(Figure A-3.4. The Highland Park News-Herald, Friday, August 14, 1942: 1. Source: Newspapers.com. Fair use)
This newspaper article, published on August 14, 1942, also confirms that Wallace Ford attended Franklin High School. This verifies that the image in the 1940 yearbook is that of Wallace Ford junior, the son of Wallace Dodd Ford aka W.D. Fard.
[1] To find yearbook photos on Ancestry.com, one needs to go to search, select “card catalog,” put “yearbooks” in the title box, and then select U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-2016. At that point, one needs to provide precise information to pinpoint the person one seeks. The direct links to the Wallace Ford yearbooks photographs are as follows:
https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1265/records/466886491?tid=&pid=&queryId=110ebee3-68d2-4dce-b2a6-978cc57a5108&_phsrc=Gko1&_phstart=successSource
https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1265/records/466886491?tid=&pid=&queryId=25a14a51-85ae-4f1c-8ea3-692a1512097f&_phsrc=Gko7&_phstart=successSource
https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1265/records/468227938?tid=&pid=&queryId=2abf3caa-d43a-4b70-a870-3d05f2958c05&_phsrc=Gko4&_phstart=successSource
https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1265/records/468227938?tid=&pid=&queryId=2abf3caa-d43a-4b70-a870-3d05f2958c05&_phsrc=Gko4&_phstart=successSource
[2] Alexandra Alvergne et al. “Identification of Visual Paternity Cues in Human.” Biol Lett April 10.4 (2014). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
