The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and was designated a Mississippi Landmark in 1989.

[5] The Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science hosts a public event every April at night in the cemetery.

[6] During the American Civil War, Columbus served as a military hospital center for the wounded, particularly after the Battle of Shiloh.

[9]: 127 In 1866, four women, who became known as the Decoration Day Ladies, organized a formal procession and ceremony to be held at Friendship Cemetery on April 26 so that a large group of Columbus women, both young and old, could place flowers atop the graves of these fallen Confederate and Union soldiers.

[10] The women's tribute – treating the soldiers as equals – inspired poet Francis Miles Finch to write the poem, The Blue and the Gray, which was published in an 1867 edition of The Atlantic Monthly.