The display appeared in the windows of Daniela Rose’s townhouse in Clinton Hill before Halloween. Four cartoon figures, made of brown craft paper, were taped to the glass. Three wore nooses.

For residents of the historically black neighborhood, there was no mistaking the symbol, and as photos of the display spread on Instagram, people came to Ms. Rose’s door, demanding that it come down.

Ms. Rose, who is white, quickly removed the decorations. She posted an apology on Facebook, saying they were inspired by a horror film about a possessed doll, “Annabelle.” And the next day, she went to P.S. 11, a predominantly black and Latino elementary school across the street, and met with the principal and administrators, explaining that she had not meant to be racist and was not targeting the school.

Such incidents take place every Halloween, with wrongheaded costumes and pageantry. But in this case, the offending decorations contained one of the strongest symbols of the country’s history of racial terror — the noose — and the potential witnesses to it were black children. The crisis sparked outrage on social media, where outrage often expands furiously then dies away with no resolution.

What happened next in Brooklyn was more surprising. Instead of what one online commenter called more “Halloween-splaining,” the conflict led to a substantive dialogue between white newcomers and longtime black residents of this area of Brooklyn.

But first, there was the conflict.

Ms. Rose, a product designer, bought her house on Waverly Avenue about a decade ago and seems to share the liberal values of her adopted home. How she had overlooked the racial implications of her homemade decorations was a mystery — seemingly even to Ms. Rose herself. (Ms. Rose declined to comment for this article.) Some people pointed out that she is from Germany, but like her apology, this was largely dismissed.

This is 2019, people pointed out: That very week, President Donald Trump was criticized for comparing the impeachment proceedings to “a lynching” on Twitter. And this is deep Brooklyn. To claim not to understand how a noose would look — especially in this neighborhood — seemed to be asking too much.

“It was a bridge too far,” said the Rev. Kirsten Foy, a minister who heads the Brooklyn chapter of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and is the father of two students at P.S. 11. Soon, protesters appeared outside Ms. Rose’s home, including Mr. Foy, shouting, “Shut her down!”

As the crisis escalated, Ms. Rose resigned from Artshack Brooklyn, a nonprofit ceramics studio she helped run in nearby Bedford-Stuyvesant; a statement appeared on Artshack’s website denouncing the display. Yet the crisis was not defused, and soon activists, parents and local elected officials turned up at Artshack, demanding it take responsibility for Ms. Rose’s paper dolls. The alternative — as the crowd chanted — was to leave the neighborhood.

“I really grappled with this,” said Steven D. Clunis, a graphic designer and the father of two girls, one a student at P.S. 11. In today’s climate, it was sadly not surprising to see such imagery dragged out from the past, he said. “But I didn’t want to have that conversation with a first grader.” Considering his children, Mr. Clunis, who is black, said, “I couldn’t do nothing.” He and his family joined protesters.

Those at Artshack — which had absolutely nothing to do with the Halloween decorations — nonetheless understood the need to be part of the solution. “There was a lot of hurt and anger, and rightfully so,” said McKendree Key, the co-founder and director of the studio, who is white. “No one is saying this is crazy. Everyone is saying, yeah — we have to answer for this.”

Ms. Key called a community meeting, and on Nov. 2, around 100 people gathered at Bedford Academy in Bedford-Stuyvesant, including Mr. Foy and Letitia James, New York’s attorney general and a Bedford-Stuyvesant resident herself.

The result could have been a conversation that dwelled on the Halloween decorations. Instead what ensued was an unusually frank discussion, by all accounts, about racism and the neighborhood — not racism in the sense of overt prejudice, but in the sense that while pouring money into homes and businesses, Mr. Foy said, some newcomers to this part of Brooklyn have behaved not as if they are adding to an already-rich culture, but have supplanted it, as if there had been nothing there before at all.

In this sense, said Mr. Foy, they are “operating from a place of white supremacy.”

Summing up what had been days of emotional conversations online, in churches and homes, Ms. James said: “There are people in this community, primarily of African ancestry, who feel a sense of loss. They don’t know this community anymore.”

In 2018, the number of new businesses in Bedford-Stuyvesant had increased by 152 percent since 2000, the fastest rate of growth of any of New York City’s 55 census-defined neighborhoods. In the same period, the black population of the neighborhood dropped from three-quarters to less than half, according to census data.

“If you’re fortunate enough to still be here,” Mr. Foy told me, “you’re subject to the decorations, you’re subject to walking into a bar in the neighborhood that was yours and being looked at like you don’t belong there.”

Artshack’s director asked the Human Root, an organization that provides racial bias training in schools and businesses, to facilitate the discussion. The founder and director, who goes by only her first name, Anyanwu, led the meeting. “Bed-Stuy is a multigenerational black neighborhood,” she said. “People imagine they’re in a new place without understanding they’re in a legacy place.”

Angeli Rasbury, a Bedford-Stuyvesant resident, lawyer and community organizer who makes pottery at Art Shack, said the decorations represented the potential harm in that. “You’re going through your every day, then you’re snapped back to lynching,” said Ms. Rasbury, who is black. “You’re snapped back to the reality that the people moving into the neighborhood don’t like you or think nothing of you.”

And then there is the simple fact that for many people from this part of Brooklyn, the noose is not just an abstract symbol of hate.

After seeing news of the decorations, Yndia S. Lorick-Wilmot wrote about her grandfather in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. One of many thousands who came to Brooklyn from the segregated South as part of the Great Migration, Corives Lorick Sr. fled South Carolina after World War II, when fellow black service members were lynched “or beaten within an inch of their lives while in uniform,” she told me.

The house on Waverly Avenue, where the decorations appeared, was once his. He had lived and worked there, as an electrician and repairman, and his family sold it to Ms. Rose after he died. “Amid the changes, those stories get lost,” said Dr. Lorick-Wilmot, a sociologist. “This is an opportunity to say there are folks like my grandfather, and his story is interesting and important.”

Artshack’s staff was arguably obliged to listen to and engage with community members, or risk losing support. But this is not a giant corporation strategically handling a public-relations disaster. It is a small ceramics studio where people learn how to throw pots on a wheel.

Its staff appears to have earnestly embraced its new role, incorporating the community’s suggestions — to focus more on the immediate neighborhood and expand scholarships, to provide racial bias training to new white-owned businesses.

The community, Mr. Foy told me, is open too. “To have and continue and incite robust dialogue about this, no matter how painful it is,” he said, “that’s necessary if we are going to trying to go forward and be a diverse community, with people who have been here 100 years and one year.”

Ms. Key said in the process, she was learning. “I have learned about the emotions and that gentrification is way, way more serious and way more traumatic than I knew before,” she said. “I think I will learn more.”

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