Julianne Moore campaigns to change high school's name
Julianne Moore and producer Bruce Cohen want to change the name of the high school they attended.
The Oscar winners, who attended Stuart High in Fairfax County, Virginia, in the 1970s, believe that it is "reprehensible" that the school honors Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart with its name, reports the Washington Post.
The school opened its doors in 1959, five years after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered public schools to desegregate. The school's choice of name was seen as an act of defiance toward the decision.
In light of the Charleston shooting and subsequent decision to bring down the Confederate flag from the South Carolina Statehouse, Stuart alums started a petition to change the school's name in June.
Now, Moore and Cohen are using their star power to take action. The Hollywood power brokers have started a Change.org petition that already has 25,000 signatures.
"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 a statement to The Washington Post. "It is reprehensible to me that in this day and age a school should carry and celebrate the name of a person who fought for the enslavement of other human beings. I think the students of this school deserve better than that moniker."
Moore and Cohen want the Fairfax County School Board to rename the school after Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court Justice and chief counsel who represented the NAACP during Brown v. Board of Education.
The school is one of the most diverse in the country: 49 percent of students are Hispanic, 24 percent are white, 14 percent are Asian and 11 percent are black.
Cohen and Moore knew each other in high school; they performed together in a play their freshman year.
