Byron Watson and the Conk

Picture of Cab Calloway (a famous musician) with his conk

My First Conk
By Malcolm X

Adapted from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 1964

Shorty soon decided that my hair was finally long enough to be conked. He had promised to teach me how to beat the barbershops' three- and four-dollar price by making up the chemicals, and then conking ourselves.

I took the little list of ingredients he had printed out for me, and went to a grocery store, where I got a can of Red Devil lye, two eggs, and two medium-sized white potatoes. Then at a drugstore near the poolroom, I asked for a large jar of vaseline, a large bar of soap, a large-toothed comb, and a fine-toothed comb, one of those rubber hoses with a metal spray-head, a rubber apron, and a pair of gloves.

"Going to lay on that first conk?" the drugstore man asked me. I proudly told him, grinning, "Right!"

Shorty paid six dollars a week for a room in his cousin's shabby apartment. His cousin wasn't at home. "Now, you watch me —"

He peeled the potatoes and thin-sliced them into a quart-sized fruit jar, then started stirring them with a wooden spoon as he slowly poured in a little over half the can of lye. "Never use a metal spoon; the lye will turn it black," he told me.

A jelly-like, starchy-looking glop resulted from the lye and potatoes, and Shorty added the two eggs, stirring real fast — his own conk and dark face bent down close. The chemical turned pale-yellowish. "Feel the jar," Shorty said. I cupped my hand against the outside, and snatched it away. "It's hot, that's the lye," he said. "So you know it's going to burn when I comb it in — it burns bad. But the longer you can stand it, the straighter the hair."

He made me sit down, and he tied the string of the new rubber apron tightly around my neck, and combed up my bush of hair. Then, from the big vaseline jar, he took a handful and rubbed it hard all through my hair and into the scalp. He also thickly vaselined my neck, ears and forehead. "When I get to washing out your head, be sure to tell me any-where you feel any little stinging," Shorty warned me, washing his hands, then pulling on the rubber gloves, and tying on his own rubber apron. "You always got to remember that any chemicals left in burns a sore into your head."

The chemicals just felt warm when Shorty started combing it in. But then my head caught fire.

I gritted my teeth and tried to pull the sides of the kitchen table together. The comb felt as if it was taking my skin off.

My eyes watered, my nose was running. I couldn't stand it any longer; I ran to the washbasin. I was cursing Shorty with every name I could think of when he got the spray going and started soaping my head.

He soaped and spray-rinsed, lathered and spray-rinsed, maybe ten or twelve times, each time slowly closing the hot-water faucet, until the rinse was cold, and that helped some.

"You feel any stinging spots?"

"No," I managed to say. My knees were trembling.

"Sit back down, then. I think we got it all out okay."

The flame came back as Shorty, with a thick towel, started drying my head, rubbing hard. "Easy, man, easy!" I kept shouting.

"The first time's always worst. You get used to it better before long. You took it real good, homeboy. You got a good conk."

When Shorty let me stand up and see in the mirror, my hair hung down in limp, damp strings. My scalp still flamed, but not as badly; I could bear it. He draped the towel around my shoulders, over my rubber apron, and began again vaselining my hair.

I could feel him combing, straight back, first the big comb, then the fine-tooth one.
Then, he was using a razor, very delicately, on the back of my neck. Then, finally, shaping the sideburns.

My first view in the mirror blotted out the hurting. I'd seen some pretty conks, but when it's the first time, on your own head, the transformation, after the lifetime of kinks, is staggering.

The mirror reflected Shorty behind me. We both were grinning and sweating. And on top of my head was this thick, smooth sheen of shining red hair — real red — as straight as any white man's.

How ridiculous I was! Stupid enough to stand there simply lost in admiration of my hair now looking "white," reflected in the mirror in Shorty's room. I vowed that I'd never again be without a conk, and I never was for many years.

This was my first really big step toward losing my self respect: when I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh to have it look like a white man's hair.

1. Why would Malcom X want to look white?

2. Have you ever gone to extremes to fit in with a particular group? Why?

3. Does this change your understanding of Byron's actions? How so?