Originally Posted by
ChrisGeorge
There's a similar sculpture to the Martin's Bank sculptures on the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C.
One of the panels in D.C. shows an African handing over an elephant's tusk for a bag of money. Some could choose to interpret that relief as showing the slave trade although to my mind it's part of an effort just to show commerce over the centuries, and so is appropriate for the type of scene you might want for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission building when it was built in the Art Deco period of the early Twentieth Century.
Of course today such a depiction might not be "politically correct" both because of depiction of the ivory trade, now illegal, as well as the idea that some Africans made money off African resources, whether it be the gold, diamonds, ivory or, yes, the black gold of slavery.