When creating new role, regardless of permissions, they keep seeing nothing and viewing logged out message

Using version 6.19. The pre-existing roles when I inherited this site work just fine, but when I add a new role and add permissions any account assigned this role is unable to view anything and it shows the logged out message when they log in. All of the menus, blocks, content, etc. is not visible to them.

Here's an example of what I've done:
- I had a working owners role set up. It had a list of permissions checked and when assigned to a user it worked just fine.
- I created a new role called managers, I checked the permissions boxes the exact same (just for testing purposes) and assigned that to a different user and no content or menus are visible. The only time they see anything is if I give them admin rights to edit things, but we don't want that obviously.
- For the sake of being thorough I then copied a working role from the sql database directly and pasted it with a new name and tried to check the permissions that way and that didn't work either.

Logically if I create a new role, add permissions, assign it to an account it should work just like the others that do work. What am I missing here?

This is the last issue I'm having with using Drupal.. Everything else is working properly. If you need me to provide any more details please let me know and I will do it immediately.

Thanks!