Jacksonville's history complicates Republican convention

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — When Republicans descend on Jacksonville, Florida, to officially renominate President Donald Trump for a second term, it will be a well-choreographed affair awash in red, white and blue and unfold amid the backdrop of a military town, a bastion of conservatism and a must-win battleground state.

But the environment outside the arena could be far more complicated. When he accepts his party’s nomination in late August for another White House bid, the president will be doing so amid the political and racial divisions deeply ingrained in his host city.

“To the outside world, Jacksonville has historically been seen as kind of retrograde. It’s a Navy town, a seaport town and its steeped in those things, but racially and ethnically and culturally, this is a diverse place and has lots of complicated stories that is associated with its past,” said Alan Bliss, the chief executive officer of the Jacksonville Historical Society.

“I think Jacksonville will take a lot of people by surprise in its diversity,” he said. “But this is a complicated city.”

It is a place still coming to terms with its Confederate past while trying to become a more cosmopolitan place in the shadows of glitzier Miami with its world-famous beaches and better-known Orlando, home to Disney World and Universal studios.

The city's sprawling metropolitan region is home to 1.5 million Floridians, nearly a third of them black and about a tenth Latino. It lies just south of Florida's border with Georgia, and about 290 miles (about 467 kilometers) north of the president's Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach.

The Republican National Committee picked Jacksonville for the political spectacle after North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, wouldn’t give in to the president’s insistence that large gathering be held without...