PROLOGUE

4) - Prologue – What is Past is Prologue

In a postscript to his film “JFK” Oliver Stone quotes a line from Shakespeare - “What is past is prologue” - which is also inscribed on the base of the statue Future (1935, Robert Alken) at the side of the front steps to the National Archives building in downtown Washington D.C.

When John Judge and I first went to the Archives and read the inscription we thought that Prologue would be a good name for the Committee for an Open Archives newsletter until we learned that Prologue is already the name of the monthly glossy magazine published by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

The quote “What is Past is Prologue” is generally thought to mean that our history is a prologue of the future, that history influences and sets the context for the present. As George Santayana put it: “Those who are ignorant of the past are doomed to repeat it.”

In the words of the speech that President Kennedy was scheduled to deliver in Austin, Texas on November 22, 1963, “Civilization, it was once said, is a race between education and catastrophe.”

In this context, CAPA seeks education from the events of our past to avoid a future catastrophe. The release of the government’s records may provide cautionary context for the murder of President Kennedy, whether or not the records show the final answer.