Piers Morgan fired back at the New York Times reporter behind the 1619 Project after she blasted his claims that she was promoting fake history.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the 1619 Project that she co-founded, criticized the British journalist on Tuesday over his latest DailyMail.com column.
In his column, Morgan had argued that the 1619 Project incorrectly claimed that colonists had fought for independence from Britain because they wanted to protect and continue slavery.
He wrote that the 1619 Project was an effort led by the New York Times to rewrite the country's history.
Hannah-Jones, whose Twitter handle is Ida Bae Wells, went on to trade blows with Morgan on Twitter as she called his summary of the project's work 'utterly tiresome'.
In response to Hannah-Jones' tweets, Morgan hit back saying: 'Hi Nikole, you stated that 'one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institutions of slavery'. That is nonsense & I find your rewriting of history utterly tiresome.
'Trust me, we Brits know why the War of Independence was fought.'
Nikole Hannah-Jones, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the 1619 Project that she co-founded, criticized Piers Morgan on Tuesday over his latest DailyMail.com column
She had tweeted: 'It's so utterly tiresome the way you sum up the entire 1619 Project - a project of 40K words and 10 essays - by a single line from a single essay and because a small group of historians didn't like that one line.
'It also may surprise you that the 13% of the population who is Black don't consider this the greatest day in our history since our ancestors lived in chattel slavery for nearly another century after 1776 and since this is a project about slavery, have an ounce of self awareness.
'It also may surprise you the the colonists were a diverse group of men and women and not gods and had a lot of noble and not-so-noble motivations to leave the British empire, including wanting to steal more indigenous lands, preservation of slavery and shirking their debts.
'You're not interested in truth but a nationalistic history that oddly - inexplicably - speaks to you as a Brit. But to imagine that you can speak for how this history should be told and what is the proper telling over Black *Americans* is just utter hubris.'
The 1619 Project is an ongoing NYT Magazine project that was first published in August last year to mark the 400th year of the first enslaved Africans being brought to the United States.
It makes the argument that the arrival of the first African slaves to Virginia in 1619 represents the birth year of the US rather than in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was signed.
The project, in the words of the NYT, aims to re-frame the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the national narrative.
Their Twitter spate came after President Donald Trump tweeted at the weekend that the education department was looking into claims that California schools are using the journalism project in the curriculum.
When questioned about his tweet, Trump said: 'We grew up with a certain history and now they're trying to change our history.'
Morgan wrote in his column that he agreed with Trump.
'The 1619 Project undoubtedly provides a huge amount of very important information about the history of American slavery and I would encourage people to read it,' he said.
'But the central tenet of the main author's belief is historically wrong, incredibly damaging, and it should not be part of any school curriculum.
'American kids should not be told that their country's great War of Independence was waged to maintain slavery. That's not why most colonists fought it; they fought it to end British colonial rule and establish the United States of America.
'Young Americans should feel proud of that victory, not ashamed, and should be taught that their country began in 1776 with the glorious Declaration of Independence, not in 1619 with the ignominious arrival of slaves to Virginia.
'To reframe the dismantling of British rule as a battle to maintain slavery in the way the NYT has done is not just misguided, it's disgraceful. It also, like so much of the culture war stuff that has exploded since George Floyd was so despicably killed, plays right into Trump's hands.'
Morgan also noted in the column that several historians had written to the NYT last year demanding corrections be made to certain elements they argued were inaccurate or unfair, including that colonial independence from Britain occurred to ensure slavery would continue.
At the time, Times Magazine editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein said he stood by their reporting and issued a lengthy rebuttal to the arguments made the historians.
Silverstein said that while he respected the work of the historians, he rejected the claims that the 1619 Project contained factual errors and was 'driven by ideology rather than historical understanding'.
Last year, the New York Times began the '1619 Project' which it said, 'aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of (The United States) national narrative'
On Sunday Trump retweeted a message from an unverified account saying the project would be taught in schools and shared: 'Department of Education is looking at this. If so, they will not be funded!'
This engraving shows the arrival of a Dutch slave ship with a group of African slaves for sale in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619
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