Should I laugh or cry?

I assigned my first-ever research paper in my 11th/12th grade class. I knew they needed practice writing formal research papers, and in my naivete, I thought that with some careful planning and clear instruction, I could be the one to guide them step-by-step through the process. That was my first mistake: overconfidence. There were a lot of mistakes after that. Now, I'm about 10 hours into a 30-hour grading process. If you gave me a choice between having my wisdom teeth out again and finishing the last 20 hours, there would be no contest.

Anyhow, after reading Alan Paton's novel Cry, the Beloved Country, I let them choose from four different research topics. Three of them went OK, but on one, I vastly underestimated students' prior knowledge and research skills. They had to compare apartheid in South Africa to slavery/civil rights in the US. Despite special meetings with me outside class to discuss research on this topic, they've struggled to gain an accurate overall picture of US black history. Nearly all of them have some interesting claims. So far, I've encountered the following gems:

“Slaveries in Africa started on December 1, 1955...
Slaves who worked on the big farm [in America] have to take care of fish and other sea food...
If the [American] blacks ever go against the law they will face punishment and they even got arrested and if they did more than that, all the black people will be kill. So [Rosa] Park got arrested in jail for going against the law. The black people cannot get merry with the white people, but later on the blacks and the white people can get merry.”

“In America, there was a massive slavery that started from the 1600s, and it ended due to the civil rights movement that led to civil war in 1865.”

“Martin Luther King was widely revered after winning the Noble Prize Winner Award. His amazing act of offering his life up to protect and save the lives of his own race without having to do anything much but give a strong speech and through nonviolence made him a true hero in my opinion.”

Accurate info but not the best wording: “The different reasons for slavery and apartheid in both the US and South Africa were that the slavery in the US is different from the slavery in South Africa. In the US, the slaves works in plowing fields, as a servant that had a lower class which was not considered to be important than white people, had no education, and the slaves came from all around Africa. As for in South Africa, the slavery and apartheid have the similar ways as in the US, likes the black people works in mines that are lower class that is not important than white people that has no education and it is only found in South Africa.”

“The Civil Rights Movement started in 1961, by President Abraham Lincoln, elected in 1860. He started the Civil War between the free, north state and the slave, south state.”

“The next movement was sit-ins that the black people would just gathered around in anytime anywhere and just sit there and did nothing but it was representing the protesting the racism.”

Lord, give me patience...and help me and my students learn a LOT through this long, laborious process!