Research Paper Proposal: African Descendants Deserve Reparations

I have been researching the need to pay reparations to African descendants due to slavery for over a month and I have decided to write a research paper on this issue. I have found very interesting ideas from electronic sources, essays, newspapers, videos, and books. I have  also interviewed professors and I will be posting quotes and thoughts that I gathered from my sources.
Below is a proposal that I have come up with and I plan to post my final draft during the first or second week of December. Keep in mind that I might modify my thesis statement as I continue to narrow down my topic.
                                                              Stay tuned!

African Descendants Deserve Reparations for Colonization and Slavery

Many nations give credit to their workers by celebrating Labor Day, but rarely is the issue concerning slaves who worked for many years without payment addressed. Slavery was abolished in America in 1864 when the 13^th Amendment was passed after a bloody Civil War. In 1865, William T. Sherman issued a Special Field Order No. 15, which would redistribute 400,000 acres of land to African-American families in 40-acre segments. This redistribution of land was a way of compensating the freed slaves for their losses and sufferings and enabling them to enjoy their newly found liberty. However, this promise was overturned by the Congress after the civil war and up to date, African-Americans haven’t received any reparations from the American government. Moreover, reparations cases have been overturned in the past and the American government seems to avoid this topic.

African-Americans are not the only ones who demand reparations from their government. Other African countries such as Kenya have successfully received some reparations from their colonizers, the British, even though these reparations weren’t considered enough by Kenyans. However, these reparations are significant because the British government acknowledged the need for reparations and they also accepted the responsibility of problems that came as a result of their involvement in slave trade and colonization. The success of the Kenyan case has triggered other countries in the Caribbean community to request reparations from British, France, and Netherlands and reparation commissions have been formed to prepare these cases.
 
The most intriguing issue that I have learned while researching this topic is that France requested Haiti to pay 150, 000 million francs for them to be freed from the French rule. In other words, the Haitian people were buying themselves back from slavery  and colonization that they were forced into. The British government also compensated slave owners for the loss of their “property” (slaves), when the British government abolished slave trade. As a matter of fact, one would have assumed that these reparations would be made to slaves who suffered and not slave owners.

In this research paper, I will examine the need for compensation to African-Americans for slavery based on events that happened in the past. I will also relate this issue to similar cases which happened or are happening in other parts of the world. In addition, I will explore questions that have been debated concerning reparations and provide suggestions on how this historical bitterness can be settled.
 
My thesis shall therefore be:
The colonial governments should acknowledge and take responsibility of problems caused by the enslavement of African descendants, by creating institutions which would support African descendants to improve their economic, social, political, and educational life.