Two Oscar winners — actress Julianne Moore and producer Bruce Cohen — are leading an effort to change the name of their old high school, which honors a Confederate general.
The two Hollywood bigwigs started a Change.org petition to rename J.E.B. Stuart High School in Fairfax, Va., for Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court justice who represented the NAACP in the historic Brown v. Board of Education case that desegregated public schools. Marshall also lived close to the school during his time as a Supreme Court justice, according to the petition.
The petition currently has over 30,000 supporters, and is slowly climbing toward its goal of 35,000 signatures.
Moore and Cohen say on the petition that when the school was founded in 1959, it was named after Stuart to protest the Brown decision.
“Today, this school is attended by a diverse group of students who should not have to attend a school that bears the name of a man who fought to keep African-Americans enslaved,” they wrote.
They both attended J.E.B. Stuart in the 1970s. Moore graduated in 1977 and Cohen in 1979. The duo recalled the school’s symbol being Stuart riding a horse and waving a Confederate flag.
“The Confederate flag was at the center of our basketball court and on our athletic letter jackets and wasn’t removed until 2001 — but the symbol of Stuart on a horse waving a flag (now solid blue) remains,” they wrote.
Moore and Cohen said the church shooting in Charleston, S.C., in June and the ensuing national outrage over the city’s casual use of the Confederate flag served as a stark reminder for them of “how these symbols of hate continue to fuel racism and violence.”
They cited a case where a Change.Org petition led to the renaming of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School in Jacksonville, Fla. Forrest was a Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader.
“No one should have to apologize for the name of the public high school you attended and the history of racism it represents, as we and so many alumni of Stuart have felt the need to do our whole lives,” Moore and Cohen wrote.
The two said they met before attending J.E.B. Stuart in eighth grade and have been friends ever since. They both went on to become Oscar winners, Moore for Best Actress in “Still Alice” and Cohen for producing “American Beauty.”
