How do I get the current color of a fragment?

The fragment shader receives gl_Color and gl_SecondaryColor as vertex attributes. It also gets four varying variables: gl_FrontColor, gl_FrontSecondaryColor, gl_BackColor, and gl_BackSecondaryColor that it can write values to. If you want to pass the original colors straight through, you’d do something like:

gl_FrontColor = gl_Color;
gl_FrontSecondaryColor = gl_SecondaryColor;
gl_BackColor = gl_Color;
gl_BackSecondaryColor = gl_SecondaryColor;

Fixed functionality in the pipeline following the vertex shader will then clamp these to the range [0..1], and figure out whether the vertex is front-facing or back-facing. It will then interpolate the chosen (front or back) color like usual. The fragment shader will then receive the chosen, clamped, interpolated colors as gl_Color and gl_SecondaryColor.

For example, if you drew the standard “death triangle” like:

glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES);
    glColor3f(0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f);
    glVertex3f(-1.0f, 0.0f, -1.0f);
    glColor3f(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f);
    glVertex3f(1.0f, 0.0f, -1.0f);
    glColor3f(1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);
    glVertex3d(0.0, -1.0, -1.0);
glEnd();

Then a vertex shader like this:

void main(void) {
    gl_Position = ftransform();
    gl_FrontColor = gl_Color;
}

with a fragment shader like this:

void main() {
    gl_FragColor = gl_Color;
}

will transmit the colors through, just like if you were using the fixed-functionality pipeline.