What Was a Conk? 20 Forgotten Hairstyles Black Men Suffered PAIN to Get in the 1960s

Picture this. A Saturday morning in 1962. A kitchen somewhere in Harlem — or maybe Detroit, or Chicago, or anywhere Black people were building something beautiful out of almost nothing. A young man is seated in a wooden chair, shoulders draped with an old towel, jaw clenched so tight you can see the muscle working in his cheek. His buddy stands over him with rubber gloves on both hands, slowly working a pale yellowish paste through his hair with a comb. The smell is sharp, chemical, almost industrial. Within seconds, the scalp begins to tingle. Then the tingle becomes a sting. Then the sting becomes fire. The young man grips the sides of the chair. He does not move. Because the longer you can stand it, the straighter your hair comes out. And in 1962, straight hair on a Black man meant something. It meant you had arrived. It meant you were somebody. What he was enduring had a name — and that name was the conk. And it was just one of the hairstyles that defined, tortured, and ultimately transformed an entire generation.