Moore seeks to change Confederate-named school

Julianne Moore and producer Bruce Cohen both went to a northern Virginia high school that was named after a Confederate general, but they're campaigning to change that.

The former classmates have created a Change.org petition to rename J.E.B. Stuart High School to Thurgood Marshall High School, after the Supreme Court justice and civil rights leader. The petition cites the fatal shooting of nine African-Americans in Charleton, S.C., as the inspiration for the campaign to change the name.

In a statement to The Washington Post, Moore called it "reprehensible" that the school is named after a "person who fought for the enslavement of other human beings."

“We name our buildings, monuments, and parks after exalted and heroic individuals as a way to honor them, and inspire ourselves to do better and reach for more in our own lives,” Moore said in the statement. "I think the students of this school deserve better than that moniker.”

Moore and Cohen, who both attended the high school in the 1970s, said in the petition description that the school symbol was, and still is, an image of Stuart riding a horse and waving the Confederate flag. The Fairfax County school was named after Stuart when it was founded in 1959, five years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision that ordered the desegregation of schools, in what was widely seen as an act of defiance against the ruling, according to the Post.

The petition has garnered more than 29,000 signatures at the time of this article's publication.