Actress Julianne Moore and Hollywood producer Bruce Cohen want a new name for their old high school in northern Virginia, named for a Confederate general.
The one-time classmates have started a petition on change.org asking that J.E.B. Stuart High School be renamed for civil rights leader and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. By Monday morning the petition had attracted nearly 29,000 signatures.
In a statement to The Washington Post, Moore said it is reprehensible that the school is named for “a person who fought for the enslavement of other human beings”.
Moore and Cohen attended the Fairfax County school in the late 1970s.
Stuart opened in 1959 and was named for the Confederate general at a time when Virginia was resisting efforts to integrate its public schools.
