The Society of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart (Latin: Societas Sodalium Sancti Joseph a Sacra Corde), also known as the Josephites, is a society of apostolic life of pontifical right for men, headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. Members work specifically among African Americans and take the postnominals SSJ.

The Josephites were formed in 1893 by a group of Mill Hill priests working with newly-freed Black people emancipated during the American Civil War. The founders included Fr John R. Slattery, who led the group and would become the first Josephite superior general, and one of the nation's first black priests, Fr Charles Uncles. With permission from the Mill Hill leaders in England and the Archbishop of Baltimore, Cardinal James Gibbons, the group established the Josephites as an independent mission society based in America and dedicated totally to the African-American cause.

The Josephites have served in Black Catholic parishes, schools, and other ministries around the country. They also played a major role in the Black Catholic Movement of the late 20th century, in which Black Catholicism became a more prominent part of the larger Black church, liturgically and otherwise. The Josephites were instrumental in the restoration of the permanent diaconate in the United States following the Second Vatican Council, and the Josephite bishop John Ricard helped found the National Black Catholic Congress in 1987.

In 2011, the society elected its first African-American superior general, Fr William "Bill" Norvel, who established a vocations hub for the society in Nigeria. The next two superiors have also been African Americans, the latest being Ricard. As of September 2021, the rest of the society's leadership and its new seminarians and priests are almost all Nigerians.

1865 ushered in the period of Southern Reconstruction, during which time, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, outlawing slavery, was passed. Ten former Confederate states were divided into five military districts. As a condition of readmission to the Union, the former Confederate states were required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which granted citizenship to all people born in the U.S. regardless of race.

It was against this backdrop that the U.S. Catholic bishops met for their tenth provincial council in Baltimore, Maryland in 1869. The fifth decree of this council exhorted the Council Fathers to provide missions and schools for all black Americans in their dioceses, as education was seen as a critical need by the community.

Subsequently, the Council Fathers wrote a letter requesting clergy for that purpose to Father Herbert Vaughan, superior general of the Saint Joseph's Society for Foreign Missions in Mill Hill, London. He had founded the society in 1866, and in 1869 opened St Joseph's Foreign Missionary College in that area of London. Vaughan later became Archbishop of Westminster and a cardinal.

Vaughan, with an additional commission for the work from Pope Pius IX, brought a group of his priests to Baltimore in 1871 to serve the freedmen. Bishops around the U.S. had varying constituencies of Black Catholics during this period, and often too few priests, parishes, and programs to serve them. While this didn't necessarily concern individual bishops, the larger bishops' group for the country did take up the cause, establishing a system of missionary work to the black apostolate that was most often filled by groups like the Mill Hill Fathers. As the need arose in a given diocese for black-focused ministry, they would be called in to pastor parishes, staff schools, and establish missionary posts to gain converts.