He was educated in local schools and attended Baptist-affiliated Louisiana College in Pineville and received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches.

[2] Early in his academic career, McGinty was the principal of elementary schools in Red River, Claiborne, and Pointe Coupee parishes.

He headed the social sciences, later history, department at Louisiana Tech for thirty-five years.

He was succeeded in the history chairmanship by William Y. Thompson, a native of Baton Rouge who specialized in Civil War and southern studies.

[10] McGinty was a brother-in-law of Charles Raymond Heard (1896–1963), a prominent wholesale grocer in Ruston who served on the Louisiana State Board of Education prior to 1960, when he was unseated in the Democratic primary election by later U.S. Representative Joe Waggonner of Louisiana's 4th congressional district.