The third-annual City of Selma Fourth of July celebration will take place Sunday night at Memorial Stadium on Dallas Avenue.

Themed, God and Country, the program will feature the Alabama National Guard Armory Band, a community choir and a community sing. Then just after darkness falls, a sky concert featuring a dazzling array of fireworks, timed to music will cap the evening’s festivities.

“We’re going to honor our ministers and churches,” Planning and Development Director Elizabeth Driggers said. “We have already sent out a couple of letters to the churches.

Let this be a time we can come together for freedom.”

The theme of God and Country will be developed specially for Selma.

Driggers told the fireworks company what she wanted and they set up a program that other cities are now asking for.

“They were very excited,” Driggers said of the fireworks team. “They have told us that other communities want to us the same theme.”

The gates will open at 6:45 p.m. Sunday night and everyone is encouraged to come early. Last year, there were still carloads of stragglers lined up and down Dallas Avenue waiting to get in.

“Come early, because we are going off on time,” Driggers said.

The band will start playing about 7:15 p.m. while the program will begin shortly after 8 p.m.

The sky concert will begin after dark.

Though some have made a tradition of watching from the river, or from the Bloch Park parking lot, they will miss out on a lot of the show this year.

“The ones who don’t come inside will miss an important part of the fireworks, set pieces in the stadium that they can’t see from outside,” Driggers said before adding they’d miss the program, the band and the fellowship as well.

“This is a time for the family,” she said.

“It’s a safe, family-oriented celebration of God and Country,” Patty Sexton added. “Come early.

I expect this year to be the best.”