Six-year-old Kellen Wallace-Benjamin looked worried.

The pictures and the posters that last year decorated the windows of 113 Brattle St., were nowhere to be seen. "I'm sure they're safe," Joan Wallace-Benjamin reassured her son, as she explained why the familiar adornments were gone.

The reason she gave is a simple one: 113 Brattle St., which last year housed the mostly Black Commonwealth Day School, is now home to the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, a Cambridge research group. In August, the school announced that it was bowing to opposition from its wealthy Brattle St. neighbors and moving back to Boston after only one year of limited operation in the city.

That decision was what brought Wallace-Benjamin and about 75 others--many of them also parents of Commonwealth Day students--out to Brattle St. for a candlelight vigil on Tuesday. Since the school announced its plans to sell the property, the neighborhood has been attacked with charges of racism, classism and elitism.

And in one of the most hotly contested election years in recent history, the school has inevitably become one of the most pressing issues facing candidates for City Council in this November's voting.

Much of the commotion centers around a petition signed by 235 neighborhood residents last fall, which opposed a zoning variance that would allow the school to expand its kindergarten.

Represented on the petition were some of Harvard's most prominent faculty members, notably Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law Laurence H. Tribe '62.

Other petition signers included celebrity chef Julia Child, WGBH-TV Vice President David O. Ives and Cambridge architect Graham S. Gund. Also appearing on the list is the signature of City Councillor Francis H. Duehay '55, the longest- serving council member endorsed by the progressive Cambridge Civic Association (CCA).

Brattle St., with its close proximity to Harvard, is often regarded as the liberal stronghold of a liberal city. But the widely publicized story of the Commonwealth Day School has prompted many to charge that the progessive image of both city and neighborhood is little more than a facade.

"From Brattle St. to Bensonhurst, racism is a curse," the marchers chanted at Tuesday's vigil. Those who spoke at the rally made it clear that they considered Commonwealth Day the latest symbol of the city's hypocrisy.

Tuesday's march was noteworthy, however, for its lack of political overtone. Organizer Phillip Martin says he did not even want politicians at the vigil. Although Alan Bell, one of the few conservative Blacks to mount a City Council challenge in recent years, did march at the front of the rally, most other candidates did not attend.

And although marchers stood and chanted outside the homes of several prominent petition signers, Duehay's house was conspicuously absent from their tour.

"This issue is already too politicized," says Martin. "That's why we didn't go to a politician's home. This issue has been obfuscated for too long."

The Commonwealth Day School moved to Cambridge from Newbury St. in Boston last fall and began kindergarten classes in the Brattle St. building. Because of space limitations, the school rented temporary classrooms for older students at the city's YWCA, according to Headmaster Robert E. Myette.

About 80 percent of the school's then-50 students were minorities, Myette said.