Born Sarah Breedlove, Madam C. J. Walker (1867-1919) is known as the first Black female millionaire in the United States by developing hair care products for Black women. Around 1904, she started selling hair care products for Annie Malone (1877-1957); she took Malone's formula and, by 1906, marketed her own products. In 1917, she claimed that she was not a millionaire, but that she hoped to become one; at her death, her estate was valued at $600,000 (nearly $9 million in 2019). [By 1914, Malone was worth well over a million dollars.]
The title of this episode is a nod to the British movie Secrets & Lies (1996) in which the white main character discovers that her baby she gave up for adoption at birth decades earlier is black.