From the Wikipedia article
The conk was a hairstyle popular among African-American men from the 1920s up to the early-to-mid 1960s. This hairstyle called for a man with naturally kinky hair to have it chemically straightened using a relaxer called congolene, an initially homemade hair straightener gel made from the extremely corrosive chemical lye which was often mixed with eggs and potatoes. The applier had to wear gloves and the solution timed just right on the applicant's head and then thoroughly rinsed out with cold water to avoid chemical burns. The desired outcome was for the newly straightened hair to be easily styled in the popular "conk" style of that era.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, taken from the style's article on Wikipedia.
Source
- Source: Wikipedia, 'List of hairstyles' (en.wikipedia.org, CC BY-SA 4.0) + each linked article's lead summary via the Wikimedia REST API; image files from Wikimedia Commons with their own licence per file
- List row: 11 of 99, from List of hairstyles (list revision 1376698486, fetched 2026-10-02T20:43:21Z).
- Article: Conk
- Text licence: CC BY-SA 4.0; adapted text stays under the same licence.
- Photograph: the Commons file The_Nat_King_Cole_Show_premiere_1956.JPG exists but records no licence value, so no photograph is shown here.
Words of quoted Wikipedia text on this page: 125.