of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.'" –Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963 Gay Rights Movement and the Declaration In 1978, at the Gay Pride Celebration in San Francisco, California, activist and later politician, Harvey Milk delivered a speech. Milk alluded to the Declaration of Independence, emphasizing that the inalienable rights established by Declaration apply to all persons and cannot be hindered because of one's sexual orientation. Excerpt from Milk's speech: "All men are created equal and they are endowed with certain inalienable rights...that’s what America is. No matter how hard you try, you cannot erase those words from the Declaration of Independence." -Harvey Milk 1978 20th century and later The Declaration was chosen to be the first digitized text (1971). The Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence was dedicated in 1984 in Constitution Gardens on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where the signatures of all the original signers are carved in stone with their names, places of residence, and occupations. The new One World Trade Center building in New York City (2014) is 1776 feet high to symbolize the year that the Declaration of Independence was signed. Popular culture The adoption of the Declaration of Independence was dramatized in the 1969 Tony Award-winning musical 1776 and the 1972 film version, as well as in the 2008 television miniseries John Adams. In 1970, The 5th Dimension recorded the opening of the Declaration on their album Portrait in the song "Declaration". It was first performed on the Ed Sullivan Show on December 7, 1969, and it was taken as a song of protest against the Vietnam War. The Declaration of Independence is a plot device in the 2004 American film National Treasure. After the 2009 death of radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, Focus Today aired a "clip" of Harvey speaking about the lives of all the signers of the Declaration of Independence. See also Journals of the Continental Congress Signers Monument References Bibliography Boyd, Julian P., ed. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1. Princeton University Press, 1950. Boyd, Julian P. "The Declaration of Independence: The Mystery of the Lost Original" . Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 100, number 4 (October 1976), 438–67. Christie, Ian R. and Benjamin W. Labaree. Empire or Independence, 1760–1776: A British-American Dialogue on the Coming of the American Revolution. New York: Norton,