School officials prompted a public outcry this month when they said the book would no longer be required reading, spurring a debate about censorship and race, and drawing national attention to the district in the city of about 45,000 people on the Gulf of Mexico.

Kenny Holloway, the vice president of the Biloxi School Board, later told The Sun Herald that the book was still available in the library, but that the eighth-grade curriculum would use another book because some of the language “makes people uncomfortable.”

Mr. Holloway, Mr. Powell and other officials at the district, Biloxi Public Schools, did not reply to phone calls and emails for comment on Friday.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee has been taught in countless classrooms and influenced generations of readers.

Set during the Depression in a small Alabama town where a black man is accused of raping a white woman, its exploration of racism, injustice and discrimination has placed it among the most banned or challenged works of literature in the United States, according to the American Library Association.