Columbia is a city in and the county seat of Maury County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 34,681 at the 2010 census and in 2013 the population was 35,558.

The "Mule capital of the world," Columbia annually celebrates the city-designated Mule Day each April. Columbia and Maury County are acknowledged as the "Antebellum Homes Capital of Tennessee", with more pre-Civil War homes than any other county in the state. Columbia is also the home of the national headquarters for the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Columbia is home to one of the last two surviving residences of the 11th President of the United States, James Knox Polk, the other being the White House.

A year after the organization of Maury County in 1807 by European Americans, Columbia was laid out in 1808 and lots were sold. The original town, on the south bank of the Duck River, consisted of four blocks. The town was incorporated in 1817. For decades during the antebellum years, it was the county seat when Maury County was the richest in the state, based on its agricultural wealth in plantations, which cultivated commodity crops of tobacco and hemp, and high-quality livestock. There were many farms for breeding thoroughbred race horses. To support these industries, the county slaveholders held a significant proportion of slave workers. Although Tennessee had competitive voting during Reconstruction, in the late 19th century, the state legislature passed laws to disenfranchise African Americans, a political exclusion that continued deep into the 20th century. This adversely affected racial relations for decades in Columbia and Maury County.

The county had some racial violence in the decades before World War II. In 1924 a black man was shot and killed in the courthouse by his alleged victim's brother after his sentence was set aside. In 1927 and 1933, young black men were lynched in Maury County for alleged assaults against white women; the first was held only as a suspect, and the other had been released by the court when a grand jury did not indict him. In 1933 Cordie Cheek, a 19-year-old black man, was falsely accused of raping a white girl. He was abducted by white men including law officials, castrated, and lynched by a white mob near Columbia.

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