For all its merits, one problem with teaching Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is that it is a story of Black suffering inflicted by white villains, written by a white author, from the point of view of a white narrator, with a white hero. Reams have been written elsewhere on the subject that minority stories should be told by minority authors with minority voices, and that point need not be belabored here.
Instead, I criticize a different flaw in teaching To Kill a Mockingbird, and virtually every other text found in the traditional English classroom in February (It should -- but of course does not -- go without saying that every month should feature Black History, and women's history, and queer history, and disabled history, and Latinx history, and Jewish history, and so on. Addressing the myriad of issues raised, ameliorated, and worsened by a singular Black History Month are beyond the scope of this post) -- Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Alice Walker's "The Flowers", Carlotta Walls LaNier's A Mighty Long Way, and so on: they're all primarily about Black suffering.
To be sure, the history of race in America is largely a story of Black suffering, so it can hardly be said that this focus is inaccurate, but it's certainly depressing: it bludgeons and beats down the soul to read only of suffering. The last thing 7th to 12th graders need is to have their souls beaten down. Especially Black children, who are already intimately familiar with, and beaten down by, the suffering inflicted by America's systems of oppression.
Instead, the curriculum should feature Black joy, Black heroism, and Black excellence. Indeed, when any minority is foregrounded, the focus should be on that minority's joy, heroism, and excellence. In short, I absolutely would choose to teach Marvel's 2018 film Black Panther over To Kill A Mockingbird or Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.