Born on November 8, 1937 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Marcia McIvor graduated from high school in Dearborn and earned a B.A. (cum laude) in English from Michigan State University, where she was a four-year scholarship student. Upon graduation, McIvor taught English, French, and Library Science at high schools in East Lansing, Michigan and Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1973, she was granted a year-long fellowship with the Institute for Politics and Government, after which she served as Headquarters Director for J. William Fulbright's 1974 senatorial campaign.

Following Fulbright's defeat in the Democratic Primary at the hands of then-Governor Dale Bumpers, McIvor continued her education at the University of Arkansas School of Law, from which school she earned the Juris Doctor degree in May, 1997. Her achievements while at the School of Law included a Criminal Justice Internship with the 4th Judicial District, placement on the Dean's List, a position on the Student Supreme Court, membership on the Student Bar Association Executive Committee, and numerous other activities and honors. That same year, McIvor, a divorced mother of two, married Professor (later Distinguished) Morton Gitelman.

As a staff attorney for Ozark Legal Services, a position to which she was hired subsequent to her graduation from the School of Law, McIvor maintained a case load averaging over 100 active cases in areas as varied and divergent as domestic relations, criminal defense, and immigration law, to name but a few. McIvor worked for Ozark Legal Services, eventually as litigation director and ultimately deputy director, until she was hired by the University of Arkansas School of Law as Supervising Attorney in 1992. One year later, she was selected as the director of the law school's legal clinic, a position she held until 1999.

According to her husband, Professor Gitelman, McIvor's unerring focus and unabating passion was juvenile justice - a fact corroborated by the content of her papers. Her work in that arena earned her a position as a non-legislative member of the Arkansas General Assembly Joint Committee on Juvenile Justice. Other civic posts included: Chairman of the Arkansas Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; Member of the Joint Committee on Services to Youth of the Arkansas General Assembly; Justice of the Peace; and Delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1975. In 1990, McIvor ran for Chancery/Circuit Judge, Juvenile Division. She lost the Democratic Primary to Charles Williams by a small margin.

Marcia McIvor died on January 23, 2003 at the age of 66 after a long, 18-year-long struggle with cancer.