The governor orders the National Guard to string barbed wire around the capitol building and take up defensive positions with machine guns.

The Ku Klux Klan, after a campaign of terror against the governor’s supporters, calls for his ouster. The governor promises to pardon anyone who shoots a klansman.

The KKK taunts the governor in the press, and headlines tell citizens to prepare for war.

No, this is not some The Plot Against America-style alternative history on Netflix. It is the scene-setting for an actual coup d’etat in the American heartland in the 1920s...