Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said he has regrets after a photo surfaced of him wearing a Confederate uniform in Auburn's 1980 Glomerata yearbook.
Lee confirmed Thursday that he is pictured in the uniform during Kappa Alpha Order's Old South event at Auburn, the Tennessean first reported.
The photo surfaced during a review of yearbooks by the USA Today Network. It comes just days after his staff said they were unaware of any racially offensive photos of the governor.
READ MORE: Blackface, racist photos among those in pages of old Glomeratas
“Although I have never acted to intentionally hurt anyone, I have the benefit of 40 years of hindsight to see that participating was insensitive and I’ve come to regret it," Lee said in a statement to The Plainsman.
The photo is included on the 1980 Kappa Alpha Order page. The fraternity held Old South parties during which members dressed in Confederate attire and held a parade. They ended the annual parades in 1992.
The fraternity's pages in the 20th Century more often than not included a picture of the fraternity members with a massive Confederate flag hanging in the background on their chapter house. The fraternity ended that practice in 1992, too.
The yearbook pages also pointed to the fraternity's celebration of Robert E. Lee.
"KA is based on the ideals that its founding fathers saw exemplified in their college president, Robert E. Lee," the fraternity page reads in 1980. "These ideals constituted the frame and fabric of Southern Culture and include chivalry, valor, loyalty and reverence for womankind."
The national fraternity has prohibited display of Confederate flags since 2001 and the wearing of Confederate uniforms since 2010.
Lee attended Auburn, graduating in 1981. During his time at the University, he was a Plainsman, a member of Kappa Alpha Order and a member of the Phi Tau Sigma engineering honor society.
He graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering.
Auburn responded in a statement.
"Auburn is committed to upholding a community that supports and promotes dignity, integrity, responsibility and mutual respect," the University said. "We focus on preparing our students for life and leadership in a multicultural world. We engage our community through such efforts as our Critical Conversations speaker series that welcomes distinguished scholars, journalists and thought leaders to share experiences on inclusion and free speech."
A Plainsman review of more than two dozen copies of the Glomerata yearbook published earlier this month found a number of depictions of blackface and racist photos, including one on the page of now-Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey's sorority.
Ivey, who was a senior the year the picture ran on Alpha Gamma Delta's page in 1967, denied knowing about the page, which includes a photo of five young white women wearing black masks and shirts with exaggerated caricatures of black people on the pockets.
The photos have taken on interest amid heightened attention to blackface, minstrelsy, KKK regalia and nooses in university yearbooks as Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam faced calls for his resignation after a racist photo on his 1984 medical school yearbook page surfaced.
Ivey's spokesman said she had never seen the Alpha Gamma Delta page from her senior year until The Plainsman contacted her office for comment on this story.
Reporters from the USA TODAY Network undertook a similar comprehensive review of more than 900 publications at 120 schools around the nation. Reporters collected more than 200 examples of offensive or racist material at colleges in 25 states.
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Chip Brownlee, senior in journalism and political science, is the editor-in-chief of The Auburn Plainsman.
