Virginia Union University on Tuesday pulled out of allowing a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration after learning the private group arranging the event planned to bring President Trump to the campus to be honored.

Dr. W. Franklyn Richardson, chairman of the VUU Board of Trustees, said in a Free Press telephone interview that organizers “misrepresented” the event in booking the Claude G. Perkins Living and Learning Center on campus for the program that was scheduled for Monday, Jan. 20.

Dr. Richardson said VUU only learned this week the real purpose when a flyer touting the event was widely distributed. The flyer identified the organizers as Darrell C. Scott and Kareem Lanier of the Urban Revitalization Coalition.

Dr. Richardson said VUU was told a different story when the organizers sought to book the campus space. He said they held themselves out to school President Hakim J. Lucas as being part of the White House Initiative on HBCUs.

Dr. Richardson said Dr. Lucas was told the White House group wanted to book the center for a dinner honoring VUU as an outstanding historically black institution.

The White House Initiative on HBCUs was established under a February 2017 executive order by President Trump. As Dr. Richardson noted, federal legislation was signed into law in late December that, for the first time, makes funding for HBCUs and for Native American and Hispanic-serving schools a permanent fixture in the annual federal budget. VUU and four other Virginia schools would collectively receive about $4.3 million a year under the act.

However, alarms began sounding when the flyer went viral on social media. It showed photos of Dr. Lucas, President Trump, his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, and Johnathan Holifield, executive director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs, who it stated were being honored at the invitation-only event.

In addition, the flyer stated the event would honor “urban impact leaders” and would feature a $30,000 cash giveaway. It also listed Mr. Scott and Mr. Lanier, whom records show as co-founders of Urban Revitalization Coalition and as longtime supporters of President Trump, as “hosts” of the event and Dr. Lucas as “co-host.”

Dr. Richardson, senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, N.Y., said he was swamped by emails and phone calls from board members and others wondering if the flyer was real or fake. Dr. Lucas, he said, was out of the country and expected back on Tuesday evening.

He said he first learned of the flyers Tuesday when he received a call from a VUU staff member.

“Students, like everybody else, were waiting to hear an explanation,” Dr. Richardson said. “Many people thought it was fake news — and, really, that’s what it was,” because the university was never told the real details before the flyer was released.

The upshot, he said: VUU rescinded permission for the URC to use the campus facility and issued a public statement distancing itself from any part of the event or the organizers.

“The university was not part of the planning for this event, was not informed of who would be participating and was not a part of distributing information about the event,” according to the VUU statement.

Dr. Richardson stressed those points during the interview, emphasizing that organizers “misrepresented” the event to university officials. He also stressed that the organizers had received “no authorization” to use Dr. Lucas’ photo or that of the university in publicizing the event. He said “nothing was put in writing” with the group. “There were no contracts,” he added.

“We cannot jeopardize the legacy of Virginia Union University and let people manipulate and use the imprimatur of the university” for their own ends, Dr. Richardson said.

He also said he learned Tuesday that “the White House heard of the event and (President Trump) decided he wanted to come. There had been some conversations about security, apparently, with the governor’s office. A person who was in charge of that was planning to come to campus” on Wednesday, he said. While Dr. Richardson said university officials try to stay out of politics, he responded when asked if the event was to be a Trump rally, “If he was coming, I guess that’s what it would have been.”

According to the university’s statement, VUU allowed the Urban Revitalization Coalition to reserve space “for what was described as an economic development discussion providing over $30,000 in cash giveaways to local residents to help stimulate economic and community development while celebrating the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

A similar event with a $25,000 cash giveaway was held by URC on Dec. 14 in Cleveland, Ohio, where Mr. Scott and Mr. Lanier are from. Mr. Scott, pastor of New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, and Mr. Lanier also hold leadership roles in the National Diversity Coalition for Trump. The NDC was founded before the 2016 presidential election by Mr. Scott and Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer.

Mr. Cohen is now serving time in a federal penitentiary for campaign finance violations, tax fraud and bank fraud in relation to payments made to Trump paramours Stormy Daniels, an adult film star and stripper, and Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, from campaign funds that he said were directed by President Trump.

According to an article posted on cleveland.com, the Urban Revitalization Coalition, formed in 2019 by Mr. Scott and Mr. Lanier, has held events in other states, including Georgia and Florida, promoting parts of the White House’s legislative agenda targeted at urban communities.

A video posted on cleveland.com from the Dec. 14 event shows Mr. Scott and Mr. Lanier honoring various urban leaders, while extolling President Trump’s actions that they said have helped African-American communities. During that event, a woman excited to win $300 in the Cleveland giveaway shouted, “Four more years for President Trump!” as she waved the cash from the stage for the audience to see.

Dr. Richardson said when he talked with the event organizers on Tuesday, “they owned up to the fact that they didn’t tell us the truth.” But he said the representatives “didn’t own up to the flyer. They said they didn’t know who did the flyer.”

He said the decision to stop the event from being held on the VUU campus was immediate.

“To me, it was simple. I told them, ‘No, absolutely not.’ We were not going to have anything like that at VUU.”

He said while the university has “never encountered a problem like this before,” he said the board would review the university’s policy on allowing outside groups to hold events on the Brook Road campus.

Dr. Richardson also said he shared details of what he learned Tuesday with the VUU board and expects the trustees will have “an informal conversation” about the incident before its scheduled February meeting.